


New Adventures: Mature Edition

by ZimsMostLoyalServant



Series: The New Adventures of Invader Zim [3]
Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Anthology, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Fantasy, Gen, Hippies, Humiliation, Humor, I just write them, Karma - Freeform, Non-canon to my main series, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Public Nudity, Randomness, Science Fiction, Story prompts by a friend, Teleportation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:29:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22353388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZimsMostLoyalServant/pseuds/ZimsMostLoyalServant
Summary: A collection of non-canon stories set in the universe of my "New Adventures" series, featuring older and more mature (well, physically anyway) versions of all the characters.
Relationships: Dib & Gaz (Invader Zim), Dib & Tak (Invader Zim), Dib (Invader Zim) & Original Character(s), Gaz (Invader Zim) & Original Character(s)
Series: The New Adventures of Invader Zim [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1408714
Kudos: 9





	1. Two Girls In The Woods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A spell gone wrong strands Gaz and Viera in the woods in a compromised state.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, while I'm working on updating the main New Adventures story, I thought I might as well also cross-post this non-canon spinoff here on AO3 as well.
> 
> Fun fact, the stories in this collection aren't of my own design, but were suggested to me by a friend on FFN by the name of The Cowardly Christian. The ideas were all fun, but were a little too mature and wacky for the main New Adventures setting. Thus, I decided to put everything into this separate story. So, welcome everyone to the first official spinoff of "The New Adventures of Invader Zim"!
> 
> A few things before we start, though. For starters, to reiterate, the stories in this collection will be ENTIRELY NON-CANON. There's several reasons for this, the primary one being that CC's story ideas tend to leave the characters in situations where it's rather hard to justify a return to status quo afterwards. So, unlike the main series of TNAIZ, for this collection I'll be adopting a policy that leans more towards canon IZ's loose continuity. Not matter what condition the characters are in by the end of each chapter, assume the reset button will be hit by the time the next chapter comes out.
> 
> The second major point is that, in order to justify (to myself at the very least) some of the stuff that'll happen in these stories, ALL CHARACTERS ARE OLDER. Well, the human ones are, anyway, since Jhonen's already claimed Zim's older than any human alive and the other Irkens are probably in the same range. In any case, whereas in TNAIZ my head canon is that the main human characters are all 11-12 years old (based on Dib being canonically 12), here they're all 18 (let's assume Gaz was born exactly nine months after Dib).
> 
> With that all out of the way, read on!

It was a bright, warm spring's day in Doomsville, and in the neighborhood of the Membrane family, a visitor was slowly approaching the family's house. Specifically, it was Viera, who was lugging a large bag over her shoulders as she made her way down the street.

"Of all the days for the house to need to be fumigated," she muttered in annoyance to herself, thinking of her own house, which was currently sealed up tight as it was gassed to deal with a particularly bad ant infestation, "Because of course, just when I make a major magical breakthrough that requires quiet and focus to make work right, I have to cram into a tiny motel room with the whole family, where I can't even hear myself think."

A part of Viera pointed out that she could just wait a few days until the fumigation was finished and she was allowed to return to the solitude of her own room. But she shut that down, as she knew that this was probably the only time she'd have the spare time to do any experimenting — Hi Skool was out for Spring Break, and Zim and Tak were spending it locked up in the Underground Classrooms for annoying Miss Bitters by having one of their arguments in class and not shutting up right away when she told them to. So, for a brief period, Viera didn't have to worry about schoolwork or fighting insane aliens, and she wasn't going to waste the free time and energy that gave her to carry on her magic research.

Hence why she was going to Dib's house. She didn't have access to her own, and even with Steve's help she doubted she'd be able to get enough privacy from their parents in the motel to work on the spell, but she was sure Dib would let her use his place, especially once he learned just what she was working on.

Speaking of which, she looked up and realized she'd reached Dib's house. Walking up to the door, she knocked, and was surprised when the door opened right away, and she was even more surprised to see that most of the living room was covered in plastic, with a plastic sheet and yellow caution tape sealing off the kitchen and the door to the basement.

"Uh, hello?" she called out, blinking in confusion. In response, a floating vid-screen displaying the image of Professor Membrane floated into view.

"Welcome, you can just- wait, you're not the medical disinfectant drones. Who are you?" the Professor asked.

"I'm Viera. Dib's friend? We've met like a dozen times, Professor," Viera responded with a sigh; it was the same every time.

"Really?" the Professor blinking behind his goggles as he looked Viera over, before shrugging, "Well, I'm a very busy man — even a genius like myself can't be expected to remember every single person I meet. Anyway, sorry to disappoint you, young lady, but if you're here to see Dib, he's currently in quarantine."

"Quarantine?"

"Yes, quarantine! To deal with his horrible illness!" the Professor exclaimed, while the screen split to show an image of Dib lying in bed. He was pale and clammy, with bags under his eyes, a hot water bottle strapped to his head and a thermometer stuck in his mouth, while a large robot labeled "Auto-Doctor" loomed next to him.

"Dad, for the millionth time, it's just a fever!" Dib protested around the thermometer.

"Now, son, who's the REAL scientist here?" the Professor replied, "And I can't risk having your disease contaminating the house and possibly spreading to me! What would the world do if I got sick for even a day?"

"As much as I think he's overreacting, you _do_ look like crap," Viera commented, earning a deadpan glare from her friend.

"Gee, thanks," he said flatly, before noting the bag she was carrying, "What's all that, anyway?"

"Ingredients for a new spell I was gonna try out," Viera replied, ignoring the arched eyebrow the Professor gave in response to hearing that, "But my house is being fumigated and I don't have enough privacy at the motel, so I was hoping to use your place."

"Well, that's obviously not going to happen. Sorry," he said with a shrug.

"Wait," the Professor spoke up, "So, you're a girl who believes in all this paranormal craziness as well? Hmm, I didn't think that was a thing."

"The hell does me being a girl have to do with it?" Viera asked crossly, only to be ignored.

"Still, I see you two appear to have bonded over this nonsense," the Professor mused, "And I do want to have grandchildren to carry on my legacy some day…"

"DAD!" Dib practically shrieked, face turning red, while Viera's eyes nearly bugged out of her head.

"Beggars can't be choosers son!" the Professor replied, completely misjudging the cause of Dib's reaction, before turning back to Viera, "I wouldn't normally do this, but if it gets you to consider Dib as a potential husband, I'll disable the defenses in Gaz's room, the one place he hasn't been and doesn't need decontaminating, and you can go be crazy in there… my word, I'm having mixed feelings about this, but again, beggars can't be choosers."

"…Thanks. I'll go do that," Viera replied, blushing brightly and feeling _beyond_ utterly mortified. Barely waiting to watch the Professor enter a command onto a pad, she practically bolted out of the room and ran up the stairs to the upper floor. Blush actually managing to increase as she caught sight of the door to Dib's room, she forced herself to look away from it and instead opened the door to Gaz's room, hesitantly entering it. Gaz's creepy robot dolls stared back at her, but made no move to attack, indicating that they actually were disabled.

"Still creepy as hell, though," Viera mused, shuddering as she looked the dolls over. But deciding to ignore them and focus on getting her experiment over with so she could get out of here, she sat down and opened her bag, emptying its contents onto the floor. She lay out a black quilt with runes drawn on it in purple thread, and placed a miniature cauldron in its middle, with a small bunsen burner heating it up from below, and began pouring the contents of several glass vials into it.

Meanwhile, downstairs, the front door opened again and Gaz walked in, gaze as usual focused on her Game Slave as she expertly dodged the various robots also entering the house and beginning the process of cleaning and decontaminating every inch of the place.

"Welcome home, daughter!" the Professor greeted, receiving a grunt of acknowledgement in return, "If you're going up to your room, try not to disturb your brother's lady friend."

Gaz froze mid-step as she heard that, and her head slowly creaked around to stare at her father in disbelief.

"What?" she asked flatly.

"Yes, she needed a space to use for some crazy thing, so I deactivated your security systems and let her use your room," the Professor replied, utterly oblivious as Gaz's disbelief morphed to rage, before she took off running for the stairs.

Back up in Gaz's room, Viera had finished mixing her ingredients, which were bubbling and boiling in the cauldron, beginning to glow as Viera chanted softly to prime the magic. Now, all she had to do was wait for the mixture to hit its optimal state, then she'd spill in on the quilt and that would trigger the spell. And then-

_SLAM!_

Viera jumped in surprise at the sudden sound. Looking up, she cursed lightly as she saw that Gaz had kicked the door open and was now glaring at her.

"What the fuck are you doing in my room?!" the violet-haired girl demanded.

"Hey, I don't want to be in your creepy-ass room, but I needed a place to work and your dad said it was okay," Viera replied.

"Like hell it is! Get your crap out of here!" Gaz snarled, marching over and kicking the cauldron over.

"Hey! Are you crazy?!" Viera shouted, jumping to her feet, "This is unstable stuff! You can't… uh-oh."

Viera trailed off as she noticed that the runes embodied on the quilt, which she and Gaz were both now standing on, had started to glow brightly as the unstable potion triggered it. Before either girl could react, there was a blinding flash of light that filled the room. When it cleared, both girls had vanished, leaving no sign that they had been there at all, aside from the potion-drenched rune-quilt, Gaz's dropped Game Slave… and two piles of now discarded clothing.

XXXXXXX

As the spots cleared from Viera's sight, she blinked, both to clear her vision and in confusion. From what she could see and feel, she was pressed face first against a tree. Also, there was something tied around her wrists, and oddly, there was a strong draft all over her body.

"What the hell is this?" an annoyingly familiar voice said, from very nearby. Pulling back from the tree as far as she could — which wasn't much, given whatever was tied to her wrists was pulling her pretty tight — Viera craned her head to look around the tree and was greeted by the sight of Gaz doing the same. The two glared at each other, before their eyes widened as they each registered the state the other was in, before looking down at themselves to see if it was the same for them. Upon doing so, they both had the same reaction.

"GAH! We're naked!" they screamed in unison, both blushing brightly.

Indeed, both girls were utterly and completely naked, the only thing artificial even touching their bare bodies being the ropes wrapped around their wrists and tied to each other, turning each girl into a living anchor for the other and keeping them pressed spread-eagle against the tree trunk. And to make matters worse, they were rather high up a rather tall tree, both of them barely balanced on top of a pair of large branches. _And_ the tree appeared to be in the middle of the forest, with no sign of people or buildings anywhere close by.

"What the fuck?!" Gaz screamed, looking around in shock, "Where are we?! Why are we naked?! Did you do this, you bitch?!"

"Hey, don't blame me!" Viera snapped, "That was a simple long-distance teleportation spell that was supposed to take me to a pre-planned spot in the city park, not wherever the hell this is. And it sure as hell wasn't supposed to leave my clothes behind, and I have no idea where these ropes came from. All of which wouldn't have happened if you hadn't interrupted the spell!"

"You're saying this is _my_ fault?" Gaz demanded, tugging uselessly at the ropes, "You shouldn't have been in my room to begin with!"

"Well if you'd waited five minutes, I'd have been out of your hair!" Viera snapped back, also trying to pull her hands free, to no avail, "So yeah, it is your fault!"

"No, it's yours!"

"No, yours!"

"Yours!"

"Yours!"

And so the girls let the stress of the situation get to them, overriding their common sense and driving them into a pointless name calling argument. This went on for quite some time, until they both finally grew tired of it and turned their attentions towards trying to free themselves. Nothing worked, however, and before either of them knew it, night had fallen. It was, fortunately, a warm night, but that was little relief for the girls, as their current condition left them very vulnerable to even the slightest chill, and every gust of wind, of which there were many.

As such, the girls spent the night just barely avoiding freezing, while growing stiff and sore from the positions they were stuck in, all of which together meant that they were naturally unable to get any sleep. By the time the sun finally rose again, both girls were shivering and exhausted.

"Okay," Viera said hoarsely, as soon as her teeth stopped chattering, "I don't know about you, but I'm willing to work together until we get out of here. So, truce?"

Gaz only snorted noncommittally, to Viera's frustration.

"Listen, you stubborn bitch," Viera growled, "You really think we'll survive another day like this? It's a miracle we haven't died of exposure already, and even if that doesn't kill us, eventually we'll starve to death. We _have_ to work together and get out of here or we're both dead!"

"…So what do you suggest?" Gaz asked reluctantly.

"See that broken off branch up there?" Viera gestured with her head at a broken branch nub a few feet up the tree trunk on her right side and Gaz's left, "If we can shimmy up there and get the rope on that side on it, we can saw through the rope. Once it's cut through, we'll be able to use our free hands to untie ourselves, and then we can climb down and figure out what to do next once we're on the ground."

"Fine," Gaz grunted. For the next several minutes, the girls managed to, just barely, coordinate their efforts and climb up the tree trunk, and slip the relevant rope over the broken branch, and begin moving it back and forth over the branch in a sawing motion. After a few more minutes, to their immense relief, the rope frayed and snapped. They then quickly shimmed back down to the branches they'd been standing on before and, upon bracing themselves, went to work untying the still intact rope and the remnants of the broken one from their wrists, letting them all fall to the ground far below.

The girls then spent several more minutes carefully climbing down the tree, and upon reaching the ground collapsed in relief.

"Okay," Viera said after more than a few minutes of rest, "Now we need to figure out how we're going to get back to your house without anyone seeing us like this."

"What makes you think I'm letting you come to my house?" Gaz growled.

"Because my place is still being fumigated, and I'm not showing up at my family's motel room like this!" Viera snapped back, turning to glare at Gaz, only to blink in surprise as she took in the other girl's exposed form for the first time. Gaz normally wore very baggy, concealing clothes, and now Viera could see that what she was concealing was… not a whole lot, actually.

" _God damn she's flat,_ " Viera internally mused, " _If I didn't know any better, I'd think she didn't even_ have _breasts. And she definitely doesn't have any other curves to brag about, but I guess you could at least explain that with the fact that all she does is eat pizza and sit around playing video games all day every day._ "

"And how are we even supposed to figure out where my house even is from here?" Gaz ranted, bringing Viera back to the present, "And how are we supposed to avoid being seen on the way?"

Frowning and shaking her head to clear it, Viera got to her feet and started pacing, trying to think of what to do next. Looking around at the leaves of the various plants surrounding them, she said, "Maybe we can fashion some cover from these leaves, some makeshift clothes."

"Do you even know how to do that?" Gaz asked.

"No, but we have try something," Viera snapped back.

"Fine," Gaz said, giving Viera another glare, "Of course, you'd probably need a whole bush to cover those ridiculously huge breasts of yours. It ever bother you that you have a pair of grapefruit on your chest?"

"Excuse me?" Viera asked, returning the glare, "My chest is perfectly normal, thank you very much. Whereas you wouldn't even need a top cover — we can just make you a grass skirt and everyone will just assume you're a boy!"

"What?!" Gaz screamed. Giving a primal cry like a banshee, she suddenly charged at Viera, who wasn't able to react in time before Gaz slammed into her. The blow sent her flying backwards, carrying Gaz with her. They flew into and through a bush, bursting out the other side… which was overlooking a steep hill. Before either girl realized it, they were falling and rolling down that hill, until-

_SPLASH!_

-they landed in a river, the current grabbing hold of them before they realized what was happening. By the time they burst back through the surface, gasping for breath, they'd already been carried several yards.

"Great, just great," Viera spluttered, while kicking hard to stay afloat, "That's just what we need on top of everything else, to be completely soaked. Thanks a lot."

"You should have just kept your mouth shut!" Gaz snapped, "This is your fault, not mine!"

"Let's not start that again, please," Viera muttered, "Let's just try and get back on land."

With that, the girls started steadfastly ignoring each other, focusing instead solely on trying to beat the current and get back on shore.

XXXXXXX

Some time later, the girls had managed to pull themselves out of the river and back onto dry land. Now with even less of an idea where they were, they had picked a random direction and started walking in it, hoping to find help of any kind. So far, all they had to show for it were sore feet, as there continued to be no sign of any kind of civilization or other people. And, to make things even worse, they'd tried to pull off Viera's earlier idea about making makeshift clothes from leaves, only to meet failure; it turned out that was harder to do that from scratch in real life than cartoons would have one believe.

They were also still steadfastly refusing to speak to, or even look at, each other if they could avoid it, each quietly continuing to blame the other for their situation. However, that didn't stop either of them from noting how far the sun was climbing in the sky as the hours ticked by, both realizing that it wouldn't be long before the day was over and they'd be back to being naked in the woods at night. They needed help and fast, but where could they find it out here in the middle of nowhere?

"Wait, do you see that?" Viera suddenly asked, stopping short as something out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. Gaz grunted at her, but also paused and turned to see what Viera was looking at. There, off in the distance, was the vague motions of a figure in movement. They were too far away to properly see, but the girls could just make out a long scythe-like hairdo, atop what seemed to be an overly large head.

"What the- is that Dib? What is he doing here?" Viera asked, blinking in surprise, "I mean, even if he'd recovered by now, why would he be in the middle of the woods?"

"Who cares?" Gaz snapped, "That idiot is about to finally be useful for once in his life. Come on."

"Er, right," Viera said, blushing brightly as the implications of the current situation hit her, "Look, you're his sister. It'll probably be less awkward if you approach him on your own and explain things so he can go get us both some clothes."

Gaz snorted, rolling her eyes at how timid Viera was suddenly acting.

"What's wrong? Worried about how your boyfriend will react if he gets a look at your future back-spasms waiting to happen?" she asked derisively, gesturing to Viera's breasts, earning a glare from the other girl.

"At least I actually look like a girl, Miss Flat Chest," she snapped. As Gaz growled and tensed at that, she quickly added, "And don't even think about attacking me again! We don't have time for this shit!"

Gaz grit her teeth and continued to glare at Viera for a moment, before huffing and turning to start stomping in the direction of the figure she assumed was her brother.

" _Stuck up bitch,_ " she mentally snarled, " _Who the hell does she think she is, talking to me like that? Especially since this is all her fault, her and her magic crap. When we get out of here…_ "

Gaz paused for a moment as that thought triggered another, and she smirked nastily.

" _Actually, now that I think about it, who says we're_ both _going to get out of here? After all, this has been such a traumatic experience, maybe I completely 'forget' to tell Dib that that bitch is out here too,_ " she thought with a chuckle, " _Such a shame she'll be stuck on her own out here, but them's the breaks, I guess._ "

Still chuckling as she decided on her course of action, Gaz continued walking towards the figure, who disappeared behind a copse of trees just as she got close enough to start to see them clearly. Her good mood at her plan interrupted by this momentary delay, Gaz frowned and picked up the pace, practically sprinting around the trees to come around the other side just as the figure reached it.

"Hey, you idiot, stop…! What the?" Gaz shouted as she rounded the trees, only to come up short in surprise. The figure, as it turned out, wasn't Dib after all. It was, in fact, a rather stereotypical old woman, complete with frumpy clothes, a cane, and glasses dangling on a chain around her neck. The only things out of the ordinary were the fact that she had a large head and a hairdo oddly similar to Dib's.

"Eh? Who's there?" the woman asked, narrowing her eyes and looking around in confusion, apparently too near-sighted to actually see Gaz standing right in front of her. Gaz, who had been staring in confusion at the old woman's presence, snapped out of it; this wasn't what she was expecting, but she could still make it work.

"Look, lady, I need you to focus," she said, "I don't know why you're here, but-"

"Hold on, hold on, let me get my glasses so I can actually see you," the woman said, grabbing her glasses and bringing them up to rest over her nose. As she adjusted them into place, she squinted through them at Gaz, her eyes widening in shock as she registered what she was seeing.

"Yeah, see?" Gaz asked, "I really need-"

"Eek! A naked boy!" the woman screamed, Gaz blinking in surprise at that, before scowling.

"I'm not a boy, you blind old-OW!" her indignant response was cut off as the woman suddenly hit her over the head with her cane.

"Help! Police! Pervert!" the woman screamed, hitting Gaz repeatedly over the head and upper chest, "Why are you streaking in front of old ladies? Don't you have any shame, young man?!"

Not far away, Viera watched all this unfold from behind a tree. Despite fear of the humiliation that might come from Dib potentially seeing her naked, she also hadn't trusted Gaz not to leave her behind, so she'd followed behind at a distance to monitor what happened. She'd been surprised when the figure turned out not to be Dib but an old woman, and watched in mixed surprise and amusement as she'd started wailing on Gaz with her cane.

Now, as a battered Gaz fled the old woman and stumbled over to where she was waiting, Viera muffled her laughter with a hand, before looking at Gaz with glee in her eyes.

"You alright, 'young man'?" she asked with a smirk.

"Shut the fuck up!" Gaz snarled, wincing as she felt the bruises forming on her head and shoulders, "How the hell could that old bitch think I'm a boy?!"

"I can't imagine," Viera replied dryly, glancing at Gaz's flat chest, "But hey, what do you say I give it a shot before she wanders off?"

"Go ahead, maybe she'll do me a favor and crack your skull," Gaz muttered. Viera glared at her, but chose to ignore it and started walking towards the old woman, whose back was currently to her.

"My goodness, what is this world coming to? Streaking boys flashing old ladies," the woman was muttering to herself, before pausing and apparently looking around, "And where am I? How did I manage to wander this far off the path? Oh well, that's what I have the EHRU for."

Just as Viera reached the woman, but before she could say anything, the woman pressed a button on her belt. In response, a harness suddenly burst out from nowhere to surround her torso, from which two large wings with rocket pods attached emerged. The pods ignited almost immediately, and soon the woman was zooming off into the distance, disappearing from view and leaving a stunned Viera staring after her.

"…What the hell was that?" she finally managed to ask after a moment.

"Elderly Home Return Unit," Gaz replied with a frown, "Something my dad invented to help lost old people get home."

"Great. That's just…" Viera started to say, only to trail off with an annoyed sigh, "Come on, let's just keep walking."

Gaz didn't respond, still rubbing the new bumps on her head, and followed as Viera started walking in the direction they'd been heading in the first place.

XXXXXXX

A few hours later, the girls' situation hadn't improved any. Their surroundings had hardly changed, with still no sign of civilization of any kind. They were still lost, they were tired and sore (especially Gaz, after the beating she'd received), and tensions between them weren't exactly easing up any. In fact, probably the only reason they weren't coming blows was because they were too exhausted to work up the energy for it.

As such, it was something of a blessing when they spotted a clearing in the distance. One that had numerous tents set up, and several columns of smoke rising from in-use campfires.

"Finally," Viera breathed in relief, stomach rumbling in reaction to the smells drifting from the campsite, "And thank God, they've got food. I'm starving!"

"Me too," Gaz muttered, absently patting her own grumbling stomach, "So go over there and get me some."

"Wait, just me go over there?" Viera asked, giving Gaz a skeptical look.

"I went first last time," Gaz said, glaring at her and tone booking no argument.

"Fine," Viera said. Huffing in annoyance, she started walking towards the camp.

"Yeah, that's right. It's your turn to get beaten up," Gaz muttered, watching the other girl walk away.

Viera, meanwhile, was growing increasingly nervous as she approached the camp. She was already blushing, arms having instinctively moved to cover herself as much as possible, as she tried to figure out what she was supposed to say to explain her situation to whoever was camping here. She obviously couldn't tell them the truth; they'd never believe it, and instead of helping her would probably call the cops on her instead.

" _Animal attack while I was bathing, maybe?_ " she pondered a cover story, " _That sounds pretty far-fetched, but a fire would probably have been spotted, so that's out. And I can't think of a single other story that sounds even remotely believable. Ah hell, let's hope they buy the animal attack._ "

Pausing just at the edge of the clearing, Viera took a deep breath to try and brace herself. She then hesitantly continued walking, entering the clearing and preparing to say something to gain someone's attention, only to freeze as she took in her new surroundings. Two things immediately registered with her, the first being that all the people milling about around the various tents were girls. The second, and by far more shocking, was that they were all just as naked as she was.

Viera stood there, slack-jawed, as she tried to process the bizarre sight of a campsite in the middle of the woods full of young girls, most in the late teenage-early 20s age range, wandering around utterly nude. Then she spotted a banner hanging from a flagpole in the middle of the camp, which read "Fifth Annual Doomsville All-Female Naturalist Retreat".

"You've gotta be kidding me," she muttered, "What the hell are the odds of this? Still, better not look a gift horse in the mouth — at least now I don't have to worry about being humiliated. Not quite yet, anyway."

Shaking her head to clear it and refocus on why she was here, Viera took another look around the camp and spotted a group of girls nearby roasting hot dogs over a fire. Stomach growling again, she quickly decided that was where she was going to go, and quickly walked over, forcing herself to stop covering herself with her arms, as that would just make her stick out at this point.

"Uh, hi?" she said awkwardly, trying to get the group's attention.

"Hi! I haven't seen you before. Are you new?" a blonde asked perkily.

"Um, yeah. This is my first time at one of these things," Viera replied, noting with irony that that was entirely factual, "Hey, listen. Not to impose or anything, but I've, uh, been dieting a lot lately and I'm _starving_. Would you mind…?"

"Nope, help yourself," a brunette responded, grabbing one of sticks that were being used to hold the hot dogs over the fire and handing it over to Viera, who eagerly took it and happily bit down on one of the hot dogs impaled on it. As she had her first meal in more than a day, Viera felt nothing but relief, confident that her luck had finally started to turn around.

Meanwhile, Gaz had discreetly followed Viera from a distance, not trusting that the other girl wouldn't try and cut her out of whatever help she found, the way that she herself had tried to do earlier. And as she watched Viera mingle with all the other naked girls from where she was hiding behind the tree line, she couldn't help but stare in disbelief.

"Seriously?" she practically snarled, "I get beat up by an old lady, but she gets help handed to her on a silver platter? What the fuck?! Grr… fine, whatever. Now that that bitch has softened those morons up, I should be able to go over and make them help me. They must have clothes stored around here somewhere for when they want to go home. I'll make someone give me some."

With that, Gaz started to walk towards the camp. Meanwhile, Viera had rapidly finished her first hot dog and was more sedately making her way through a second one. With her hunger satisfied, she had been able to put more effort into deciding what she was going to say to get some help with her other problems, and she was pretty sure she'd come up with a simple solution for at least one of them.

"So, listen," she spoke up, catching the attention of the nearby girls, "This is kinda stupid, but I think I got turned around on my way here, and I'm not quite sure how to get back to town."

"Oh, that's simple," one of the girls said, pointing to the west, "Just head that way about five or six miles, and you'll end up right on the freeway outside of the city limits."

"Five or six miles?" Viera echoed flatly, trying to hide her wince, "Er, I mean, wow, guess I didn't even notice. Uh, isn't that kind of excessive?"

"Well yeah, but it has to be," the blonde said, "Otherwise we'd have to worry about perverts crashing the party. This way, they're not likely to want to spend so much effort to come all the way out here."

"Same with those cheapskates who think they can show up without forking over the attendance fee," the brunette added, "They're not going to come all this way just to get in trouble for not paying up."

"Heh-heh, yeah," Viera said, fake smile plastered on her face as she wondered what they'd do if she realized she was here without having paid; from their tones, they probably wouldn't give her a chance to explain. But in any case, maybe if she admitted her situation, she could borrow some clothes and hitch a ride home, then she could pay up afterwards. After all, the worse consequence was probably just being charged a fine, right?

Oh, and she should probably also get some help for Gaz, too, shouldn't she?

"Hey!" a familiar voice called out.

" _Speak of the devil,_ " Viera thought, looking towards the tree line as Gaz emerged into sight, the rest of the camp turning to look at her as well. Seeing that she had everyone's attention, Gaz opened her mouth to say something, only to be interrupted by a sudden shriek from one of the campers.

"AH! A boy!"

"What?" Gaz asked, blinking dumbly, not comprehending how a group of young girls could possibly be making the same mistake as the old lady had. If she'd bothered to look down, she'd have realized the answer — she was standing behind a bush that came up to just below her waist. With only her top half being visible, and it being so unfeminine in appearance, her actual gender wasn't apparent.

Not being aware of this, she was only confused, which quickly turned to anger, and she glared at the girl who'd cried out.

"I'm not a boy, I'm-OW!" she started to yell, only to be cut off by a rock suddenly flying through the air and smacking into her head. And before she could react to it, virtually every girl in the camp except Viera rushed forward and descended on her, many of them carrying rocks and sticks.

"Get the pervert!" one of the girls shouted, the crowd surrounding Gaz and knocking her to the ground, raining blows down on her. Viera watched all this in shock, before slowly putting down the stick and half-eaten hot dog she'd been holding, turning around, and bolting out of the camp in the opposite direction, which luckily was the one she'd been told led back to the city.

A small, _small_ part of her felt bad about leaving Gaz back there like that. But there wasn't anything she could do to help her in her own current condition, and in any case, she didn't want to find out what they'd do to _her_ if they found out that she had come with Gaz and also hadn't paid those attendance fees they'd mentioned.

And so, leaving Gaz behind, she ran back into the woods.

XXXXXXX

Some time later, an exhausted Viera finally stopped running, the adrenaline-induced burst of speed and energy finally wearing off. Slumping over and panting, she braced her hands on her knees for a few minutes as she caught her breath. She knew she was going to have to pace herself, seeing as she still had a long way to go, if the information she'd received at the campsite was correct.

"Of course, with my luck, those girls were probably wrong and I'm going the wrong way," she muttered, head rising to look around and take in her current surroundings. And then she blinked in surprise, as she saw that not too far away, just off the path she was standing on, was a log cabin. It was moderately-sized, and looked like it hadn't been used in a while, with the door hanging half off its hinges, its windows boarded up, and holes in its ceiling. Still, it was a sign of civilization, and she wasn't going to pass it up.

"Please don't be a serial killer's hideaway," Viera said, half expecting it to be the case. Even so, she hesitantly approached the door and knocked on it… causing it to fall off its remaining hinges and collapsing onto the interior floor, kicking up a cloud of dust.

Coughing as she waved the dust away and stepped inside, Viera took in the interior of the cabin, which was just as run down as the exterior. The main room she was in only had few pieces of furniture — a few chairs, a couch, a couple of small tables, and a few bookshelves — all of which were rotted through from water damage and covered with mosses and mold. The kitchenette set off to the side was likewise dilapidated, and the old-fashioned stove furnace in one corner was completely run through with rust. Only the door in the back of the room, presumably leading to a bedroom, was in any kind of decent condition.

"Well, this is disgusting. Still, could be worse I guess," Viera commented, looking the place over. She started to walk towards the other door to check out what was beyond it, when a sudden wind picked up out of nowhere. Well-honed paranormal investigative instincts kicking in, Viera jumped back in a defensive posture, ready to bolt out the front door in needed, while waiting to see what was going to happen.

She didn't have to wait long. The wind formed a mini-twister in the middle of the room, eerie blue lights sparking around it for several moments, before bursting in a near-blinding flash. When it cleared, there was now a ghost floating in mid-air, in the translucent pale blue form of a slightly fat young woman wearing glasses and a dress that looked a few decades out of style.

"Who dares disturb the quiet haven of my home?" the ghost demanded, before pausing as she actually took in Viera's appearance. Cocking her head to the side in confusion, she added, "And why in the world are you naked?"

"That's a long story," Viera replied, blushing slightly and quietly counting her blessings that the ghost was at least female, "So, listen. Assuming you're not a poltergeist, banshee, dybbuk, or some other kind of malevolent spirit, you think you can help me out a little?"

"Oh, sure," the ghost said after a moment's thought and gesturing towards the back door, "There's some clothes in the bedroom closet. They won't be in good condition, but I gotta figure anything's better than being naked."

"Amen to that," Viera agreed, walking over to the door, "And thanks."

"No problem," the ghost replied, floating after her. Reaching the door, Viera opened it and entered into a large bedroom. It, as well as the small bathroom she could see through another door off to the side, were in the same condition as the main room, everything rotted and covered in plant life. However, she didn't care about any of that, instead only having eyes for the closet taking up one wall. Opening it up, ignoring the fresh cloud of dust kicked up, she was greeted by racks of clothes, old-fashioned and moth-ridden, yet still more than capable of fully covering her.

"Oh thank God," Viera sighed. Grabbing the first dress that looked like it wouldn't fall apart upon being worn, she eagerly slipped in on. It wasn't a perfect fit and was rather itchy, but she couldn't care less about that at the moment.

"That is so much better. Thank you so much," Viera said again, glancing at the ghost, "I really owe you one. Maybe I can help you with your unfinished business and move on? What's your story, anyway?"

"Well, that's quite a tale," the ghost replied, "It all began in 19-"

The ghost was suddenly cut off as, with a crash, the bedroom door was kicked off its hinges, revealing Gaz standing in its frame. She was a total mess, with a black eye, bloody nose, split lips, and bruises covering a lot of her body. And she was glaring bloody murder at the surprised Viera.

"Oh, hey, you caught up," Viera said awkwardly, as she looked Gaz over, "Wow, they really did a number on you, didn't they?"

"You bitch!" Gaz snarled, "I should fucking kill you for leaving me behind like that!"

"Don't pretend you wouldn't have done the exact same thing if our positions were reversed," Viera replied. She paused to reconsider that, then said, "Actually, scratch that. You probably would have joined in on the beating, wouldn't you?"

"I'll probably beat you anyway! Those morons wailed on me for five minutes before they finally noticed I don't have a dick!" Gaz exclaimed, before stopping as she finally took notice of the ghost, who was looking at her in confusion.

"What are you looking at, Casper?" Gaz demanded.

"…I can kinda see how someone might mistake you for a boy from a distance," the ghost commented. Viera face-palmed, while Gaz stared in disbelief, before her face twisted up in a furious snarl.

"Who you fuck asked you?! And who the hell are you, judging my looks? You look like you died by falling out of the ugly tree and hitting the branches on the way down! So shut the hell up before I find your corpse and shove you up its ass!" she screamed in the ghost's face. The ghost reeled back in surprise, eyes wide, before narrowing in anger.

"How dare you? I let you and your friend trespass in my house, I gave her some of my clothes, I would have given _you_ some, and this is how I'm repaid?" the ghost asked, rage bubbling in her voice.

"We're not friends!" Viera said quickly, but the ghost ignored her.

"Well, consider my goodwill rescinded!" the ghost cried, the blue light of her form turning a bright red and face taking on a demonic visage, "GET OUT!"

Moments later, Gaz was sent bursting through one of the boarded-up windows, followed seconds later by Viera, who had been stripped of her newfound dress. The girls bounced across the ground for a few yards, before coming to a stop in a heap. They scrambled back to their feet, just in time to watch as the cabin, lit up by an unholy light, warped and collapsed in on itself, vanishing in a flash.

For a few minutes, the girls stared blankly at the spot where the cabin had just stood. Then Viera gave a wordlessly scream of frustration, tugging at her hair.

"Great, that's just great!" she ranted, turning to glare at Gaz, "Smooth move, Gaz, insulting the paranormal entity who was willing to help for nothing in exchange. You know, if you'd resisted the urge to insult or threaten anyone who vaguely angers you, we'd both be clothed right now!"

"…Nah, too tired to be angry," Gaz muttered, beginning to walk away in the direction of the city. Viera glared after her, before following with a grumble.

XXXXXXX

An hour or two later, the sun was finally starting to set. But on the bright side, to the naked girls' immense relief, they'd finally reached the city limits. Doomsville loomed before them, and in a sure sign that their luck _had_ to be turning around by now, they even appeared to be on the side of town containing the Membranes' neighborhood.

"Finally, this nightmare is almost over," Viera sighed in relief.

"Yeah, except for actually getting to my house without half the town seeing us," Gaz pointed out. She'd paused at a stream they'd found along the way and managed to clean herself up a bit, but she still looked awful, and there wasn't anything she could do about her various injuries. Once she got home, the first thing she planned on doing after grabbing some clothes and food was having the Auto-Doctor patch her up… and then maybe have it dissect Viera while she watched. She was leaning towards that over finding the energy to beat her up herself.

"Yeah, except for that," Viera grumbled, hating to admit that Gaz was right about that. She was _really_ looking forward to being able to go her separate way from the other girl, and hopefully not have to interact with her again for a good long while. But like Gaz said, first they'd have to get back to the latter's house without being seen. Starting with getting past the group heading up the road towards them… wait, what?

"Oh, come on!" Viera groaned at the sudden appearance of more people. She and Gaz, not having a chance to run off anywhere else, jumped into the bushes running along the side of the road, heads poking out of it to peer at the newcomers.

It was a truly bizarre group. They were in a variety of ages and ethnicities, which wasn't odd in and off itself. The way they were dressed, however, was what was strange — they were wearing grass skirts, bead necklaces, body-painted tattoos, and feathered headdresses, as well as tops made of leaves and grass for the women. They were carrying wooden staffs, spears, axes, and bows, as well as a variety of other crude tools, most decorated with colored beads and feathers.

They basically looked, both girls thought, like what suburbanites _thought_ that aboriginal peoples looked like, but that no real aboriginals would be caught dead dressing up as.

As the group got closer, the girls tried to pull further back into the bushes and hide until they passed, only to move so quickly that they bumped into each other. The instinctive cries of pain caught the attention of the group, who stopped and turned towards the sound, catching sight of the girls before they could duck out of visibility. Realizing they were caught, the girls froze, neither sure what to do. Meanwhile, the "aboriginal" with the largest headdress and most heavily decorated staff, presumably the leader of the group, stepped towards them.

"Hello," he greeted, "I'm not the suspicious sort, but are you spying on us?"

"No!" Viera said quickly, blushing as she tried and failed to come up with a cover story; worn out from such a tiring couple of days, she just went for honesty, "We, uh, kinda lost our clothes."

"You mean… you're naked?!" the leader exclaimed, the rest of his group gasping and muttering amongst themselves.

"Yeah, what's it to you, perv?" Gaz demanded, blushing just as hard as Viera. To the girls' surprise, the crowd suddenly burst into loud cheers. After several minutes of this, with the girls staring in confusion, the leader managed to calm the others down, then he turned back to them.

"We are the Children of Gaia's Love," he declared, "We are those who have abandoned the cruel and pointless technologies and lifestyles of so-called 'civilized' modern society in pursuit of simpler ways. In this pursuit, we came across an ancient prophecy which foretold our quest, and also told of how we'd come across a girl emerging from the sanctuary of nature, naked and pure as all humans were in the ancient times of pre-technology, and how this girl would be appointed as our Queen."

As he finished speaking, the rest of the group parted, revealing that several of them were carrying an elegant wooden throne, upon which sat a magnificent golden crown, studded with all kinds of jewels.

"And now the time has come!" the leader proclaimed, "Our Chosen One shall be crowned, and we her utterly loyal servants, shall carry her forth to the great feast to fulfill her destiny! …So, which one of you is it?"

"Loyal servants and a feast, huh?" Gaz echoed with a smirk, eyes glinting with ambition as her stomach growled, reminding her of how hungry she was. Viera, meanwhile, had been listening to all this with a furrowed brow, certain that she'd heard of this group before, somewhere on one of the fringier Internet forums she'd visited at some point. Then it clicked, and her eyes widened, face paling.

"Uh, Gaz?" she started to say, only for the other girl to cut her off.

"Shut it," she said, scowl returning as she turned to glare at Viera.

"No, really, this is important-"

"Shut up!" Gaz snarled, shoving Viera to the ground and looming over her threateningly, "I don't want to hear another word from you! This whole mess has been your fault, and you've been riding high while I've been getting one beat down after another! Well, now I'm finally going to get the respect I deserve, and you're not going to ruin it for me! Try to take this from me and I'll crush you, bitch! And just for good measure, I'll crush both our brothers too!"

Viera stared up at Gaz, trying to think of what to say, before finally giving a scowl of her own.

"You know what?" she said with a shrug, "Go ahead, Gaz. It's all yours."

"Damn right," Gaz replied, before stepping out of the bush to stand in front of the Children of Gaia, too focused on the positives coming her way to care about being embarrassed, "Behold! Your Queen has arrived!"

The group looked Gaz over in surprise, muttering to each other, before the group leader spoke up again.

"Behold, how the Chosen One's body has been ravaged, in reflection of how modern society has ravaged the natural world that she is the embodiment of!" he proclaimed.

"…Sure, let's go with that," Gaz said flatly, "Now, chop-chop. Let's make with the crowning and the feasting."

And so, Gaz found herself wearing the crown and seated on the throne, which was being lifted into the air by the Children and being carried back into the forest.

"Finally, I'm getting what I deserve!" she crowed. Viera, watching as Gaz and her new "worshippers" disappeared among the trees, snorted as she heard this.

"Considering that everything I've heard about this group indicates that they believe they'll become one with nature by consuming the flesh of their chosen one, I'd say that's actually true," she commented. She admittedly felt guilty about leaving Gaz to such a fate, but hey, she _had_ tried to warn her. It wasn't her fault that Gaz cared more about being worshipped than considering the possibility that someone might have something to say that she needed to hear.

"Besides, they'll probably take one taste of her and get so disgusted they let her go," she mused. Washing her hands of the situation and deciding to return her focus to her own situation. Getting up and turning around, she once again started walking back towards the city.

XXXXXXX

The sun had fully set by the time that Viera actually reached Doomsville proper. Between the darkness, the lower number of people outside opposed to during the day, and no longer having to deal with Gaz on top of everything else, she was easily able to avoid being seen. She bolted from alleyway to alleyway, across streets, and behind bushes, cars, dumpsters, and any other cover she came across.

Finally reaching Dib's street, she crouched behind a pair of trashcans and took a look around, to make sure no one would see her on the final stretch. Seeing no one, she bolted down the street and, upon reaching the house and noting an open window, leapt through the air, flying through the opening and landing with a crash on the floor of the living room.

Processing the fact that her long ordeal was over, she gave a brief, near-hysterical laugh, before composing herself and climbing to her feet, feeling every ache and sore she'd gained over the past 36 hours.

"Okay, almost done," she said to herself, "Just have to head upstairs and in see if my clothes really were left here. If they were, grab them; if they were vaporized, I'll just take some of Gaz's, she won't miss them. Then I'll head home — and never, ever tell anyone about any of this."

With that in mind, Viera quickly walked upstairs and started heading towards Gaz's room… and then, halfway there, the bathroom door opened and Dib, looking significantly less sick than the day before, stepped out, having apparently just come out of the shower, judging by the fact he was only wearing a towel.

The two naked teens froze as they registered the sight of each other.

"Uh…" was all Dib managed to say, before his brain seemed to shut down from shock and he collapsed into a heap on the floor, nose bleeding and a noticeable tent forming in the towel wrapped around his waist.

"Well," Viera said after a moment, face red as a tomato, "At the very least, this still beats what Gaz is probably going through right now."

XXXXXXX

Back in the woods, now that the sun had set, a peaceful quiet had fallen over the area… which was immediately shattered as Gaz came bursting out of the underbrush, breathing heavily and her eyes wide with panic. She was still wearing the crown the Children of Gaia had given her, though it was half off her head at a crooked angle from her frantic running, and various symbols had been painted over her body. Well, she'd _thought_ it was paint; turned out, it was actually butter and cooking oil.

Gaz came to a halt, hands on her knees and panting for breath. She looked around in desperate search for help or a hiding place, only to wince as an arrow suddenly shot through the air from behind her, nicking her cheek as it passed. Looking back, she watched with horror as the Children emerged from the trees, waving torches, weapons, and eating utensils.

"Come back, Chosen One!" the leader cried out, waving his staff around, "We can't fulfill the prophecy until you've let us free your divine self from your mortal flesh!"

"Also, we're all really hungry!" another wannabe aboriginal added, brandishing a knife and fork.

" _Fuck you for leaving me out here, you bitch!_ " Gaz mentally cursed Viera, while turning and running further into the woods, the cannibalistic cultists right behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And done. Did you like it? Hate it? Feel utterly indifferent about it? Please let me know, I crave feedback.
> 
> Anyway, don't expect updates on this to be any kind of frequent. This is an anthology, not a full series of its own, so it feels less urgent. I'll work my way through CC's numerous story outlines as time, energy, and inspiration allow; to date, there's only one other entry in the FFN version, and I'll probably cross-post that later this week. But, I like to think it's off to a good start, and that this one right here gives a good idea of what most of them will be like.
> 
> 'Til next time, please comment!


	2. Buff Run at Skool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A failed experiment by Zim inadvertently leads to a humiliating prank being played on Viera.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the second (and last) of the currently published entries of this anthology, as promised.
> 
> Not much else to say here, except a reminder that everyone human here is roughly 18 years old, and that full credit for the plot outline goes to The Cowardly Christian on FFN.
> 
> Read and enjoy!

It was another dull and boring day at Doomsville Hi Skool. Everyone slogged through the typical drudgeries of teenaged skool life, rarely breaking from the routines they'd set for themselves. Though for some of them, those routines could still be pretty exciting.

Case in point, there was Zim, always planning mayhem. And today, that took the form of him acting on a human expression that he'd heard and, of course, misinterpreted. Specifically, the fact that during a Biology class, the teacher had brought up the fact that in many species females were more dangerous than the males. Somehow, the resulting train of thought Zim had after hearing that had culminated in the idea of turning human females into vicious warriors to serve him.

And what better place to start than here? After all, this filthy building was overrun with human females, so it wasn't like he'd be short of test subjects. And even better than that, was that this would give him a perfect chance to eliminate Dib once and for all.

"Remind me again how this is supposed to work?" Skoodge asked, as he and Zim sat at one of the outdoor tables in the Hi Skool's courtyard, watching the other students mill about. Zim, who was tinkering with a handheld device that looked somewhat like a dart launcher, scoffed at Skoodge's inability to follow his clearly superior thought processes.

"It's simple, Skoodge, much like yourself," he explained, putting the finishing touches on the device, "With this delivery device, I'll be able to discreetly infect a number of the female pig-smellies with my Anger Serum, along with a healthy dose of nanites programmed to make them focus the resulting anger on Dib. Then they'll destroy him, and I'll know it works, at which point I can then mass produce it to use on a global scale. Now I just need to find the right test subjects to use it on."

"Why not just use it on Tak?" Skoodge asked.

"Zim would never give her the satisfaction of destroying Dib instead of me, even if unknowingly on my command," Zim snapped, "Besides, this serum is calibrated for humans."

"How about Gaz, then? She'd be in perfect position to get rid of him."

"Yeah, but she already hates him. How would I know it was because my serum was working properly and not just because she finally got tired of having him around?"

"Okay, then how about Viera?"

"Who?"

"The girl Not-Dib," Skoodge clarified, sighing, "You really should try to remember all your enemies' names, Zim."

"Zim has more important things to do than remember the names of lesser foes!" Zim snapped, "And in any case, do you really think I could get close enough to infect her without any of them noticing? They're somewhat less stupid than other humans, more observant. No, I need people who won't see it coming… that's it! The so-called 'popular' crowd!"

"Huh?" Skoodge asked, blinking in confusion.

"It's perfect. Just look at them," Zim said, gesturing towards a group of girls gathered at one of the other tables, chatting animatedly about something, "So wrapped up in their inane and petty beliefs that they're better than everyone else. They'd never notice me infecting them, and even better, while they already dislike the Dib-Stink, they don't outright hate him, so changes in their attitudes will be noticeable. It's genius!"

Without a second thought, Zim stood up and, device hidden in his clenched hand, started walking in the popular girls' direction, but leaving enough distance between them that they wouldn't notice him. It worked, the girls remaining oblivious as Zim passed them by a few feet away, not noticing even as he lifted the device to point just above them, nor as he fired it.

A dart, no bigger than a pinkie finger, shot out of the device and flew through the air. Reaching a spot in the air a few feet above the assembled girls, it burst apart, disintegrating into a nearly-invisible cloud of vapor, which quickly settled down over them. As it did, they all froze for a moment, their eyes dilating and glowing slightly, and then they returned to normal, shaking off their stupor and resuming their conversation.

Smirking, Zim slipped the device into a pocket and walked away. Now it was just a matter of waiting for the serum to fully kick in, and then the fun would begin…

Of course, as per usual with Zim's experiments, this one was flawed and already doomed to fail. Not that it was entirely his fault in this case — sure, there was his usual misunderstanding of how human body chemistry worked, but it definitely didn't help matters any that GIR had come across the serum while Zim had been leaving it to brew, and for some reason mixed some gravy into it. As such, the serum's chemical nature was completely screwed up, and rather than invoking rage, it would have the exact opposite effect.

Needless to say, the girls Zim had just infected would _not_ be planning to harm Dib anytime soon. That being said, there _was_ one member of Team Save Earth who would be feeling their ire very soon…

_A Couple of Days Later_

Gaz, currently in-between classes, walked down the hallway, focus on the Game Slave in her hands, and as usual doing her best to block out everyone and everything else around her. It was something she'd made an art out of over the years, though that said she could still pick up what people were saying if they were within earshot, it was just a matter of filtering it out unless it was one of those rare cases of actually being something important.

For example, earlier she'd overheard Zim grumbling something about something not working the way it was supposed to. She didn't have the context to understand what he was talking about, and frankly didn't really care. But, she could tell that he clearly had some kind of new plan in the works and it was already starting to fail on him, so she should probably keep an eye out for the right time to hunker down whenever whatever it was blew up or something; she had no interest in getting dragged into one of Zim's messes, after all.

"…sick of that stuck-up Goth bitch!" a voice sounded from down the hallway she was passing. Freezing mid-step as he heard that, Gaz's regular frown deepened. Pausing her game, she looked up and saw a group of the popular clique — Zita, Jessica, Sara, and others — huddled by a row of lockers, deep in conversation.

"I mean, she just struts around like she owns the place!" Zita was saying, "Who the hell does she think she is?"

"Yeah, and she's so ugly," Jessica added, "With her stupid hair and her dumb black clothes."

"Someone should really do something about her," Sara said, "Teach her a lesson about where she really belongs around here — right at the bottom!"

" _Excuse me?_ " Gaz hissed, having come up to the group without their notice and now glaring intently at them. Jumping in surprise, they turned to look at her, all going pale as they took in her visible anger.

Realizing what Gaz must have heard and misunderstood, Zita frantically started waving her arms to ward her off.

"Not you, not you!" she explained rapidly, "We meant Viera!"

"Oh, okay then," Gaz said, her aura of menace instantly melting away, "Fine, yeah, she's a bitch. But since when do all of you care?"

"Every since we realized that she's hogging Dib to herself!" Aki spoke up, leaving Gaz staring at her in disbelief.

"Come again?" she asked, eyes actually opening in confusion.

"Look, I don't know when this started or why, but lately we've all realized how badly we've been overlooking your brother," Zita said, "There's just… something about him that's just suddenly become so irresistible."

"Also he's a hunk!" Jessica added.

"Right, that too," Zita nodded in agreement, before scowling, "But we can't get the time of day with him because he's always hanging out with that freak and her brother! He's finally something worthwhile, and she's in our way of him!"

"…Ew," Gaz said after a moment silently absorbing all that, going green in the face. Shaking it off, she turned to try and get away from this conversation, only to stop as a thought suddenly occurred to her. Smirking, she turned back to the other girls and asked, "How badly do you want to get Viera out of the way? Because I think I've got a surefire way to get rid of her."

"Really? Well, then we're listening," Zita responded, her and the other leaning forward as Gaz started explaining her idea. By the time she was done, they were all grinning nastily.

This was going to be fun…

XXXXXXX

Standing under the warm flow of water from the shower head, Viera let her mind wander as her body went through the motions of scrubbing herself clean. This was part of her routine, and something that made her glad that she had a free period in her schedule right after gym class. This way, she didn't have to rush cleaning up, and if necessary she could give herself plenty of time to just think through whatever was on her mind without anything else, Skool-related or otherwise, distracting her.

And what was on her mind right now was, what the hell was going on with all the other girls in this skool? After all, she'd long since gotten used to the nasty looks, casual dismissals, and occasional insults she received from most of the other students. After all, she and her brother and Dib all fell outside of the oh-so-preciously-coveted category of "cool", so being sneered at was the price paid. But lately, it seemed like most of the other female students were going out of their way to direct their dislike at her. Particularly intense glares, stage-whispered heated insults, intentionally trying to trip her up or bump her or anything else that might cause her physical, if minor, harm, and so forth.

Weirder still, it seemed to Viera that the girls really ramped up the cattiness of these acts against her whenever Dib was nearby. Yet at the same time, they were acting particularly better, almost _kind_ , towards him. Hell, if she didn't know better, she'd swear a few of the girls had actually been _flirting_ with him.

" _But there's no way that really happened,_ " she mused, as she rinsed shampoo out of her hair, " _Dib's been treated as a social outcast by these people since he was a kid. They're not going to suddenly switch gears just because they've noticed how cute he is… whoa, hold on, where did_ that _come from? Slow down there, girl, don't go ruining a good friendship by making it awkward._ "

Deciding that she'd let her mind wander quite far enough, Viera finished rinsing and shut off the shower. Grabbing her towel off a nearby rack, she did a quick pat-down dry before wrapping it around herself and walking towards the locker room. Still focused on trying to make sense of the other girls' behavior, she barely noticed as she transitioned between rooms, until she saw something that made her stop in her tracks.

"What are you doing here?" Viera asked, frowning at Gaz, who was sitting on a nearby bench. Ordinarily she wouldn't question why another girl was in the girls' locker room, but Gaz never came in here. Hell, she didn't even take gym class — she'd presented Coach Walrus with a signed permission slip from her father saying that he didn't want her wasting her time on "pointlessly trying to perfect the inherently flawed human meat case" when she could instead be focusing on increasing her intellectual boundaries with other studies.

Personally, Viera thought Gaz was either too lazy for gym or self-conscious about being naked in front of other girls, or both. Either way, it was very out of character for the other Goth to be here, which made Viera highly suspicious.

"Oh, don't mind me," Gaz replied with a smirk, "I'm just here to enjoy the show."

"Huh? What are you-?"

"Get her!" a voice yelled, cutting Viera off as more than a dozen other girls suddenly came running out of hiding behind the rows of lockers and swarmed at her. Before she knew what was happening, they had tackled her, and soon she had two girls apiece firmly holding each of her arms, two more kneeling on the floor to just as firmly grab her legs, and several more grabbing her by the shoulders and waist, leaving her almost entirely immobilized.

"What the hell is this? Let me go!" Viera shouted, struggling in vain to break free while glaring at Zita, who was standing in front of her with a sneer. Clearly, she was in charge of whatever was going on here.

"Well, well. Not so high and mighty now, are you, bitch?" Zita asked, chuckling nastily.

"Look, whatever this is, knock it off right now and I'll be sure to forget about it," Viera said, trying to sound less nervous than she was. She didn't exactly have a lot of leverage here.

"Oh, you're not going to forget about this any time soon, and neither is anyone else," Zita sneered, "By the time we're done, you're never going to dare show your face around this skool ever again. And once you're gone, we'll have Dib all to ourselves!"

"…What?" Viera asked flatly, not sure she'd heard that properly.

"You heard me!" Zita snapped, stepping forward to get into Viera's face, "We're sick of you hogging Dib for yourself! He's a hunk, and he deserves better than a paranormal-loving freak like you holding him back! He deserves someone hot and awesome who can help him stop studying all that alien and magic junk and realize how cool he can be. Someone like me!"

"Ahem," Jessica cleared her throat pointedly, she and the other girls giving their leader slight glares from their spots still holding onto Viera.

"Or any of the rest of us," Zita added halfheartedly.

Viera didn't respond, being slightly distracted. Thanks to the closed distance between them, she was able to see how strangely dilated and discolored Zita's eyes were; moving her gaze around without moving her head, she noticed that it was the same with every one of the girls whose eyes she was able to see.

"…Are they high?" she asked, glancing past Zita to direct her question at Gaz, who was still sitting on the bench and watching the proceedings with a smirk; so she, at least, was still acting normally.

"Eh, I don't really get what's gotten into them either," Gaz replied with a shrug, "Honestly, this whole 'them suddenly being into Dib' thing is weird and gross. But, if it means a chance to put you in your place… well, when I heard they had a problem with you now, I wasn't going to let the opportunity pass me by."

"Wow, so you're getting someone else to beat me up for you. Real nice," Viera said dryly. To her surprise, Gaz only smirked wider at that, and Zita snorted in what sounded like a mix of amusement and derision.

"Really, that's what you think we're going to do? Beat you up?" Zita asked, "Why would we do that? It'd just make everyone — especially Dib — feel bad for you, and that's the last thing we want. No, the only thing that's gonna be wounded today is your pride. Like I said, you're going to be so humiliated, you'll never come to this skool again. Hell, you'll probably never show your face in public at all!"

"And how do you plan on doing that?" Viera demanded, putting on as much bravado as she could. In response, Zita smirked even wider than Gaz, before grabbing ahold of Viera's towel and, before the restrained girl could even register that, ripped it right off.

Viera gave a high-pitched yelp, face turning as red as a stop sign while Zita tossed aside the towel, her and the other girls all laughing at Viera's embarrassment.

"Hey, not bad," Jessica said mockingly, looking Viera over, "She actually looks pretty good, don't you think, Z?"

"Hmm, I dunno, Jess," Zita replied, making a show of looking like she was deep in thought, "I guess we'll just have to get an outside opinion, won't we?"

"Wha… what do you mean, 'outside opinion'?" Viera managed to stammer out through her sudden embarrassment and fear.

"They mean, you're going outside," Gaz said, laughing heartedly. Viera's eyes bugged out at that, and then she cried out in surprise as the girls still holding onto her lifted her into the air, now carrying her crowd surf style as they started heading towards the locker room's hallway door.

"Wait, wait, hold on! You can't do this!" Viera yelled, trying to squirm free to no avail, "Stop and think about how much trouble you'll all be in!"

"Why would they get in trouble?" Gaz asked, gleefully taking in her nemesis' panic, "After all, it's your word against all of theirs that you didn't just decide to go streaking."

"You'll be lucky if you don't get expelled or at least suspended after this," Zita sneered, "And even you don't, you really think you'll be able to walk around this skool without everyone picturing you naked? Even if they let you stay, you'll _have_ to leave. And then Dib is ours for the taking."

"Oh come on, that- that's just- how is humiliating me going to make any of you more appealing to him?!" Viera demanded near-hysterically, as they finally reached the door.

"We'll figure out the rest of the plan later! For now, you streak!" Zita snapped, grabbing the door and flinging it open. And then, before Viera could say or do anything else, the girls chucked her forward, sending her tumbling head over bare ass across the floor, until she came to a halt in an undignified heap in the middle of the hallway.

Stunned by the impact, Viera was only able to lie there, face down on the floor, until the sound of the locker room slamming shut snapped her out of her daze. Eyes widening, she jumped to her feet, arms instinctively clamping over her breasts and privates as she looked around in panic. Fortunately, she seemed to be having at least a little bit of luck at the moment, as there was no on else in sight, but that wouldn't last — before long, the next period would begin, and the hallways would fill with students heading for their next class. She needed to do something, fast.

She didn't even bother trying to get back into the locker room. The others were probably keeping it shut from the other side, at least long enough to guarantee she couldn't get back in without being seen. After all, even if most of those airheads weren't that bright, Gaz at least would be smart enough to think that detail through. So getting back to her clothes in there was a lost cause at the moment.

Fortunately, those weren't her _only_ clothes in the skool. After a few years of fights with the Irkens (and the occasional other paranormal entity), all of Team Save Earth had learned the value of having extra clothes on hand to replace those that got torn, burned, covered in strange substances, and otherwise rendered unwearable. And since a good percentage of their fights took place in skool, each of them had spare sets of clothing stashed around the building. Now, if she could just get to one of those without being seen…

Clamping down on her panic, Viera forced her reeling mind to focus on this slim hope, and decide which of the stashes to go for. The first one she could think of was the one in her locker, but she quickly eliminated it — she didn't have enough time to get to it and get dressed before the end of period. So she'd have to go for one of her hidden stashes, and of that category, the first one to come to mind was one she kept in the art classroom, which thankfully was hardly ever used due to budget cuts.

Knowing she didn't have much time left, and not able to think of anything better to do, Viera started making her way towards the art room. She was somewhat hindered, however, by the fact that she had to crouch to avoid being seen by anyone who happened to glance out a classroom door's window at the wrong moment. Since she couldn't move very fast when practically doubled over, this meant she barely made it to the next hallway intersection before the bells suddenly started ringing.

"Shit!" she cursed, eyes widening in panic and darting about. Seeing that she was standing next to a door marked "Pool", and having only seconds to act, she burst through it, slamming it shut behind her just as other doors up and down the halls started opening. Quickly looking around to make sure that the room was empty, Viera heaved a sigh of relief and slumped to the floor, leaning against the door and listening to the sounds of people moving around in the hallway.

After a few minutes the noise died down, the students reaching their next classes, and as no one had tried to enter the room, Viera allowed herself to calm down. Standing up, she gave a closer look to the room, and her face scrunched up in disgust at the state of the pool. While impressively-sized, being about fifty feet long, half that across, and a dozen feet deep at its deepest, it was also absolutely filthy, the water practically opaque and green due to how long it had been since someone had bothered to clean in here.

"Seriously, is there any part of this skool that _hasn't_ had its budget cut?" Viera muttered rhetorically. Shaking it off, she started to mentally prepare herself to head back into the halls when she paused, a thought suddenly occurring to her. Looking to the side, she confirmed that there were indeed doors there clearly marked as leading to the locker rooms; between all the panic and the fact that she never used the pool, she'd completely forgotten that you could go directly from the locker rooms to here.

"Please, if there is a God, let those dumb bitches have left during the class changeover, and not think to steal my clothes just in case I circled back," she said, quickly making her way towards the door to the girls' lockers. However, just before she could push it open, she froze as she heard the distinct sounds of people's voices coming from behind both it and the boys' room door.

And more importantly, of people walking _towards_ those doors.

" _Are you kidding me?!_ " Viera mentally screamed, before turning and rushing away from the locker room doors. Seeing the hallway doors — both the one she'd come through and one on the opposite end of the room — and immediately realizing that she'd never get to them in time, she did the only thing she could do, no matter how disgusting it was.

Taking a breath, she charged forward and dove headfirst into the pool with a splash. A moment later, her head popped back up, and she gagged at the taste and feel of the nearly slime-like water she was now coated in. But despite now feeling like she'd need another shower, she was grateful for the state of the water, as it meant that everything below her neck was now obstructed from view. Something that came in handy seconds later, as the locker room doors opened and about a dozen and a half students came out, none of them paying Viera any real notice as they started getting in the pool themselves.

Viera honestly couldn't understand why anyone would _willingly_ swim in this cesspit of a pool, and could only watch in disbelief as her fellow students splashed about happily in the filthy water. On the bright side, at least, they were all so preoccupied with their frolicking that no one was paying any attention to her as she hid as best she could in the corner. But she knew this wouldn't last forever — sooner or later, someone would get close enough to see through the murky water that she wasn't wearing anything. And even if they didn't, when the time eventually came for everyone to get out of the pool, they'd surely notice the oddity of her staying put and question it.

No matter how she looked at it, Viera knew that she was rapidly running out of time before she was (quite literally) exposed. She needed to get out of here, and she needed a way to do so without anyone noticing. She needed a distraction, but what?

"…And that's when I shoved him in a trashcan and then stuck it in a locker," a familiar obnoxious voice spoke up from nearby. Glancing over, Viera saw Torque lounging against the side of the pool next to one of the ladders, talking to some disinterested-looking girls floating nearby him. Watching the jock flex his muscles in a blatant attempt at flirting, Viera rolled her eyes and tried to brush off the distraction, when he continued his story, "I gotta admit that I didn't think his big head would fit in there, but it squeezed in. Heh, I figured that'd teach that crazy freak to yap about all that paranormal crap."

Viera scowled as she realized that the jackass was talking about bullying Dib. She knew it still happened on occasion, though not as much as it had before she and Steve had shown up. It honestly pissed her off, but now wasn't the time to do anything about it, not when she needed to focus on finding a way out of this…

An idea suddenly sparked in Viera's head.

" _Okay, yeah, that could definitely work,_ " she thought, " _But do I really want to sink that low? …Screw it. He's a jackass, and I'm desperate._ "

Taking a deep breath, Viera quickly but quietly dove below the surface of the water. Forcing her eyes to stay open, she looked around and confirmed that the water's murkiness meant that while she couldn't really see the other people in the pool, she could still make out their vague outlines enough to see where she was going.

Moving as carefully as she could to avoid anyone bumping into her, she made her way over to Torque. Just as carefully, she reached out and grabbed fistfuls of his baggy swim shorts, pulling them over to the ladder he was next to, tying the material around the metal. That done, and her lungs starting to burn, she turned around and swam back over to the corner she'd been hiding in before.

Emerging from the water with a gasp, Viera looked around. As before, no one was paying her any attention, and Torque was still attempting to sweet-talk the girls, oblivious to what she'd just done. Leaning against the side of the pool to brace herself while still looking as casual as possible, Viera took a calming breath before putting her desperate plan into motion.

"Hey, aren't they serving tacos in the cafeteria today?" she asked no one, pitching her voice so it would carry across the room. That had the reaction she'd hoped for, everyone suddenly perking up; tacos were the one food item at this skool that were actually fully edible every time they were served, so whenever they were available it was something to get excited over.

"Edible food? Thank you God!"

"I can taste it already!"

"I'm not going to be sick all day for once!"

"Let's go get on line now before anyone else can!"

"Not before me you're not!" Torque shouted, leaping up out of the pool-

_RIP_

-causing his swim trunks, still tied to the ladder, to tear right off. There was a moment of stunned silence, and then everyone still in the pool burst out laughing at Torque.

"Oh wow, now that is just sad."

"How could someone so big have something so small?"

"What's wrong, Torque? The water too cold, or you just been taking too many steroids?"

As the jeers and insults flew at Torque, the usually tough jock turned bright red, covering himself with his hands and turning to run away. The laughter followed him as everyone watched him run towards the locker room… and thus were all looking in the opposite direction from Viera. Seizing the opportunity, she leapt out of the pool and bolted towards one of the hallway doors, slipping through it before anyone could turn back around to see her.

Once back in the hall, Viera allowed herself only a moment to feel relief at having escaped that close call. But she wasn't out of the woods yet, so she quickly shook her head and turned her attention back to once again creeping down the hall in the direction of the art room. Her luck seemed to be holding out this time, as she made it more than halfway towards her destination before something interrupted her again. Namely the bell ringing once again as the period ended.

Cursing, Viera quickly checked her surroundings and spotted a closet off to the side. Rushing over to it, she flung it open, slipped inside, and then shut it behind her, leaving it open only a crack. Peering through that slit, she watched as the hallway filled with students moving between classes, and after a few minutes emptied again. Sighing, Viera prepared to leave, only to pause as it occurred to her that there might be some spare towels or something in this closet she could use to cover herself with. So she turned around… and her eyes bugged out in shock.

At the other end of the surprisingly spacious closet was a table, strapped to which was a man who had been partially skinned. And standing over him was Nny the creepy janitor, bloody knives in hands and staring at Viera in what looked like just as much surprise as she felt.

To his credit, the homicidal maniac only ogled the naked teenage girl for a few moments before tearing his gaze away to look her in the eyes.

"…I didn't see anything if you didn't," he said.

"Agreed," Viera said quickly, horror and disgust overriding her mortification. Not wanting to spend another moment in his presence, she threw the door open and ran back into the hallway as fast as she could. That was risky, but frankly after what she'd just seen, on top of everything else she'd already been through, she didn't care anymore. Especially when she was so close to finally reaching her goal and the relief it provided.

Maybe the universe was finally taking pity on her, because she managed to make her way to the art room without anything else interrupting her. As she entered the empty room and shut the door behind her, Viera finally allowed herself to fully calm down. All she had to do now was slip on her spare clothes, and this nightmare would be finished.

" _Well, for me anyway,_ " she mused as she walked over the trashcan in the corner behind which her clothing stash was hidden, " _But I'm sure as hell not letting the others get away with doing this to me. Especially Gaz for giving them the idea — she likes nightmare worlds so much? Let's see how much she enjoys them when I send her to…_ "

Viera's thoughts trailed off in surprise as she pulled aside the trashcan only to fail to be greeted by the sight of the bag holding her clothes. Instead, all that was there was a note posted to the floor, which read "Whoever this bag belongs to, please claim it at the Lost & Found. -Mr. Lubbock."

Viera felt her eye twitch as disbelief and frustration swelled up in her. After all the trouble she'd gone through to get here, all the near misses at being seen, and now she had to go somewhere else? Really?!

Grumbling angrily, Viera made her way back to the door, pausing as she heard the bell ring again. Sighing, she waited for the crowd of students to die down before she could make her way to the Lost and Found, only to freeze up as she heard a particular voice approaching.

"…Right this way, young dudes and dudettes," said the voice of Mr. Lubbock, the old hippie who served as the art teacher, "This is the one day a week that the budget lets us have art class, so let's get our grooves on."

" _Seriously?! Today of all days?!_ " Viera thought with panic. Looking around desperately for a place to hide, Viera saw a group of roughly human-sized clay sculptures in the back of the room, each at least partially covered by tarps. Bolting over to them, she ripped a tarp off of one of the statues and quickly draped it over herself, making sure to cover herself as completely as possible. She then forced herself to stay perfectly still as she heard the door open and people enter the room.

"Alright everyone, let's get settled in and get started," Mr. Lubbock said, "Now, for our truly righteous class, we're going to be working fully with our hands, really become one with our art. So, we'll be working with clay, and in the spirit of communal art — and because our supplies _are_ limited — you're going to be working with and adding onto existing pieces. So, everyone go grab one of those statues in the back."

" _Oh, fuck me,_ " Viera mentally moaned, as she realized that he meant the statues that she was currently pretending to be one of. At the sounds of the students starting to walk towards her corner of the room, it took all the naked Goth's willpower to not start hyperventilating, " _Should I make a break for it? I mean, I'm covered by the tarp, I doubt anyone would recognize me or even realize I'm naked. Or, no, should I just wait? I don't know how many people are even here; they might grab all the statues they need without coming near me. Or-_ "

Caught up in her panicked thoughts as she was, Viera failed to notice the sounds of someone walking up to her until they were directly in front of her. And as such, she was unable to do anything before that person pulled the tarp back.

Viera froze in shock and humiliation as she registered the fact that she'd just been exposed. Worse, that the person who'd found her was a guy. And worst of all, was that that guy was _Dib_.

As Viera began suffering a borderline total mental breakdown from the mortification, Dib was staring at her in surprise and confusion, which only grew as he started noticing how much skin she had on display. Turning red in the face as he put two and two together, he forced his eyes to stay on her face rather than wander too far downwards, then quickly covered her back up with the tarp. Glancing around, he gave a sigh of relief as he saw that no one else had seen her; that said, he knew he had to get her out of here quickly. Racking his brain for a means of doing so, he latched onto the first cock-and-bull excuse he could think of.

Quietly shushing Viera and whispering at her to stay still and quiet, he turned to Mr. Lubbock, who was sitting at the desk at the front of the room with an airy look on his face as he watched his students start to work.

"Uh, Mr. Lubbock? This room is giving me some, um, weird… vibes? Can I take my piece out into the hall to chillax and work on it out there?" Dib asked, pretty sure he could feel his IQ drop with each word he spoke.

"Right on, little man. Just remember to grab the hall pass first," Mr. Lubbock replied, gesturing to a plastic plaque hanging from a hook on the wall next to the door.

Glad that the teacher had bought his BS (and also that this pass wasn't another radiator), Dib quickly grabbed and slipped the pass on, before he — being very, _very_ careful where he put his hands — picked up the tarp-covered Viera and carried her out into the hall. Once out of the classroom, he looked around to make sure there was no one else in sight, and then leaned close to where Viera's head just to make sure no one whom they might pass could overhear.

"What the hell happened?" he whispered to her.

"Shut up," Viera hissed, face burning underneath the tarp; she'd snapped out of her embarrassment-induced shock, and now was just plain mortified and angry, "Just get me to the Lost and Found so that I can grab my spare clothes."

Sensing how much his friend wanted to avoid this conversation at the moment, Dib did as he was told. A few minutes later, they reached the Lost and Found, which was just a series of beaten-up plastic boxes lining one wall of a hallway. Spotting a backpack with Viera's color design, and quickly confirming with her that it was the right one, he grabbed it. He then walked to the closest girl's bathroom, at which point Viera slipped out of his arms, grabbed the backpack from Dib, and then slipped into the bathroom.

For the next few minutes, Dib stood awkwardly next to the bathroom door; several people passed by and gave him odd looks, but he just flashed the hall pass around his neck and they moved on. Eventually, Viera emerged from the bathroom, backpack in hand and looking extremely happy to be clothed again. A heavy silence then fell on the hallway, the teenaged pair awkwardly avoiding looking at each other, both blushing at the memory of recent events.

"So, uh," Dib finally broke the silence, "Is now a good time to ask what happened?"

"What happened is that all the popular girls are crazy, and your sister is a bitch," Viera replied, scowling as she started rummaging through the backpack.

"What?" Dib asked, blinking in confusion.

"Something weird happened to the popular girls, making them all decide they hate me more than normal," Viera explained, leaving out the fact that they were all suddenly infatuated with him; no need to embarrass him, "And Gaz decided to egg them on and convince them to jump me in the locker room and toss me out naked. I've spent all morning running around to avoid being seen, and now it's payback time."

To punctuate her point, Viera pulled a spell drive out of her bag, Dib arching an eyebrow at it.

"You keep spell drives with your spare clothes?" he asked.

"I like to be prepared," she said, tucking the drive under her arm, "Now, any idea where those bitches are?"

"Uh, well, it's almost lunch, so maybe they'll be in the cafeteria?" he suggested. As Viera nodded and walked off at a determined pace, Dib followed after her and quickly added, "But, you're not going to hurt them, right? I mean, I could understand that being your first reaction after something like this, but that'd just get you in trouble. Plus, I'm probably obligated to keep you from doing anything to Gaz."

"Like she'd care if your positions were reversed," Viera muttered, before adding at a normal volume, "No, I'm not going to hurt them, even though I _really_ want to. I'm just going to give them a taste of their own medicine."

Not sure how to respond to that, especially as Viera seemed to be barely keeping a lid on her anger over the situation, Dib said nothing and continued to follow after her. Soon, they arrived at the cafeteria, hanging back by the doors as they took in the view of the room. There was a mid-sized crowd of students milling around, either on line to get food or sitting at tables eating and hanging out.

Of particular interest to the pair was the sight of Zita's group sitting at one table off to the side, talking amongst themselves animatedly, while Gaz sat at the next table over, eating and clearly trying to block them out. Craning their heads, Dib and Viera were able to overhear what they were saying.

"Why hasn't that bitch been caught yet?" Zita demanded angrily.

"Maybe she has, and the teachers are just keeping it quiet?" Jessica suggested.

"No way, _someone_ would have seen or heard something," Sara pointed out, "She's probably hiding in a closet somewhere."

"Shit, maybe she doubled back to the locker room," Aki said, "We should have tossed out her clothes just in case she managed to make her way back."

"Yeah, then why didn't you say something before?" Zita snapped.

"Will you all shut up already?" Gaz snarled, "I'm trying to eat here."

"Why aren't you more worried? This whole thing was your idea!" Jessica said.

"I don't do 'worry'," Gaz replied, "Besides, there's only two ways this turns out — either she's caught, or she somehow gets away, at which point we just come up with something else to do to her. Either way, like I said before, it's her word against all of ours that we did anything to her in the first place."

"Okay, but what if she does get away and tries something to get even with us?" Zita asked.

"You're just worried about that _now?_ " Gaz asked with a derisive snort, "Not that you need to be. Viera doesn't have the nerve to try anything."

"And I think that's my cue," Viera whispered to Dib, opening the spell drive and scrolling through its contents until she found the spell she was looking for. Smirking, she activated it, a glow spreading from the spell drive to her free hand, which she pointed at the group. The glow gathered in a ball at her fingertips and then discharged with a flash; seconds later, the clothes of all the girls in the group briefly glowed the same color, though none of them seemed to notice it.

Smirk widening, Viera placed her fingers together in preparation to snap them, but paused as a thought occurred to her. Turning to Dib, she quickly said, "You might want to either turn around or cover your eyes."

Dib arched an eyebrow at that, but took her advice, placing a hand over his eyes. Seeing that, Viera turned back to her targets and snapped her fingers, triggering the spell. For a moment, nothing happened, and then startled yelps emerged from Zita's group. She and the other girls' clothing was once again faintly glowing, and more than that was now moving on its own, clearly wriggling and writhing on the girls' bodies, much to their surprise and bewilderment. Even Gaz, who was dragged out of her seat by her dress's movements, had lost her usual cool, eyes wide with confusion.

"What the hell's going on?!" she yelled, a note of panic in her voice as she rapidly patted herself down to try and stop her clothes' movements.

"How should we know?!" Jessica yelled back, likewise trying to pin her clothes into place.

"Well, someone do something!" Zita shouted, "And fast! My clothes feel like they're about to-"

_TEAR_

With a single massive sound of cloth ripping, the clothes of Gaz, Zita, Jessica, and all the other girls in their group suddenly tore apart so violently it was like they were exploding. As the resulting scraps fluttered to the floor, the girls all stood there in shock, too stunned to fully process that they were all suddenly naked, until the rest of the students in the room — whose attention had been drawn by the girls' erratic movements as their clothes came alive — all burst into uproarious laughter, pointing and jeering at them. That snapped them out of it, and they all reacted the same, squealing in embarrassment, blushing brightly, and trying to cover themselves with their arms while also simultaneously trying to hide behind one of the tables, despite the fact that there wasn't nearly enough cover for all of them.

"Move over! People can see me!" Jessica yelled, jostling Sara over to try and make more room for herself.

"They can see all of us, you stupid bimbo!" Gaz snapped, shoving several girls aside in her attempts to squeeze further out of sight, "Now give me some room!"

"You give me room!" Zita replied, actually daring to shove Gaz back, "You don't even have anything worth covering up, flat chest!"

"What did you just call me?!"

"You heard me, you masculine-looking Goth bitch!"

"What is going on here?!" a familiar voice screeched, all the laughter and the nude group's panic screeching to a halt as Miss Bitters suddenly swept into the room. Taking in the sight of the naked girls huddled behind the table, the old crone's typical glower intensified to a truly terrifying extent.

"Why are you all naked?" she demanded. Caught between humiliation at their state and fear at Miss Bitters' anger, none of the girls were able to stammer out more than a few syllables of a response before one came from elsewhere.

"They all just started jumping around for no reason, and then they tore their clothes off," someone on the other side of the room spoke up, several agreeing comments quickly chiming in.

"We didn't tear them off, they tore themselves off!" Zita protested, trying desperately to cling to some control in the situation.

"Yeah, they were moving on their own, that's why we were all running around!" Jessica added, several of the other girls rapidly nodding in confirmation.

"Your clothes were moving on their own?" Miss Bitters asked dryly, clearly not believing them. At the whole group's enthusiastic nods, she snorted, then reached into a pocket and pulled out a remote-looking device, "Well, you're all clearly suffering from a shared delusion. Good thing the Crazy House gave us this upgrade."

"Wait, _what?_ " Gaz asked, eyes widening. But before she or any of the others could protest, Miss Bitters pressed a button on the remote. In response, a panel opened in the ceiling, and a tube came out, which began sucking up air like a giant vacuum; caught off guard, all the naked girls were pulled off their feet and dragged through the air, disappearing into the tube. A few moments later, it spat them back out, except now they were all crammed into a Crazy Bucket that was swelling out like a metal balloon to try and contain them all.

"Can't breathe!" Sara wheezed.

"Get your elbows out of my kidneys!" Jessica protested.

"Eww, I'm touching her ugly-boy body!" Zita shouted, earning a glare from Gaz, whom she was pressed up against.

"If I could move, I'd punch your teeth in," she snarled, "And why are we all in the same bucket?!"

"We barely had enough money to pay for this upgrade, let alone buy more buckets," Miss Bitters replied, as the doors to the cafeteria suddenly opened and a pair of hulking men in the white-coated uniforms of the Crazy House entered the room. Nodding towards Miss Bitters, they walked over to the overstuffed bucket and picked it up, the girls inside it screaming protests as they were carried away.

Protests that died off into shocked disbelief as they were carried past Viera, who smirked and waved at them as they passed by. Seeing their intended victim standing there fully clothed, while they had been humiliated, Gaz and the others could only stare for a moment, slack-jawed, before bursting out in enraged yells and profanity as they were carried away.

"So, is it safe for me to look now?" Dib asked, still covering his eyes but blushing anyway — while he hadn't seen anything, he'd heard enough to give him plenty of mental images, which only conjured up the memory of seeing the exposed Viera earlier.

"Yeah, you're good," Viera replied, still watching where the others had been carted off, "Man, watching that almost made everything I went through today worth it."

"Right," Dib said, blush not really going away as he looked at her, "So, about earlier-"

"No," Viera said, flatly and firmly, "We're not going to talk about it. Not now, not ever. As far as I'm concerned, now that it's settled, it never happened. Got it?"

Seeing the determined look in Viera's eyes, and honestly wanting to put the awkwardness of that moment behind him, Dib nodded in agreement. The two then quietly walked back into the cafeteria, where everyone else had settled down and gone back to their food.

All except for Zim, who had watched on in confusion and disgust as the girls he'd infected had all suddenly started running around and then torn their clothes off, all for no apparent reason. Was this some side effect of his flawed serum? But he hadn't infected Gaz, so why would she have gone crazy like the rest if that was the case?

As Zim was pondering this, elsewhere the orderlies were struggling with their human cargo, whose combined struggling was causing the bucket to shake in their hands. One of the orderlies shifted position to try and get a firmer grip on the bucket, but in the process his elbow smacked into a fire alarm switch, triggering it. As bells started and sprinklers came on, the orderlies looked at each other sheepishly, and then quickly ran off towards the exit, still carrying the Crazy Bucket. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them, back in the cafeteria, Zim was caught unawares by the sprinklers and, having not put on any paste today, starting rolling around in agony on the floor; everyone making their way towards the nearest fire exits totally ignored him.

So in other words, what passed for normality had been restored.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there you go. Funnily enough, the first couple of scenes were a lot easier to write than the main plot (starting with Viera's actual entry into the story), even though I figured I'd have more fun with that.
> 
> Ah well. Hope you all enjoyed it none the less.
> 
> Please comment!


	3. Not-So-Fun and Games

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A prank by Gaz leaves Dib having a rather interesting day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well hello there. Been a while since I updated this anthology, hasn't it? (Though not as long as it's been on FFN) Well, with my focus on the main New Adventures series, getting started on "Ruby Pair", and a couple of other smaller projects, there just hasn't been time for it. But, all that's out of the way, so here's another one of my friend The Cowardly Christian's prompts brought to life.
> 
> A reminder for anyone who's forgotten in the long time since laster chapter — all human characters in this story are at least 18 years old. Also, it is only semi-canon, so while it's tangentially connected to the main New Adventures universe, it is not the definite future of the series, and will only be loosely influenced by any developments in the main stories, if at all.
> 
> Also, as I mentioned in "When Gamers Collide", my view of Gaz has become more nuanced ever since "Enter the Florpus" aired. So, going into this chapter, I'd like to remind everyone that just like in the main New Adventures, this story's Gaz is specifically based on the show version of her rather than the more humanized version from the comics and movie.
> 
> And on a final, more somber note, I do hope that everyone is staying safe during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Be careful and stay healthy, people!
> 
> Read on!

It was a bright and sunny day in Doomsville, not that one could tell that from within the Membrane household. Specifically from within Gaz's room, where the door was shut and the window curtain drawn. The teenaged Goth didn't want any sort of distraction from her focus on what was currently displayed on her computer monitor — which, despite what most people would guess, wasn't a video game. Or at least, not directly.

Several months ago, Gaz and other hardcore gamers had been looking forward to the release of _Gore of War 3: The Bloodening_ , the newest entry in a highly successful franchise, one of the most action-packed and violent of all time. Which was the problem, as this newest game was _so_ violent, that even by modern standards it was considered by censors as too over the top to allow into the market. As such, to the outrage of the waiting fans, the game was scrapped.

Or at least, officially. As it turned out, the game company wasn't willing to just throw away the vast investment they'd put into making the game, and had found a way to try and recoup their loses by means of the demo copies of the game they had lying around. The company couldn't legally sell them, but there was no legal reason they couldn't give them away as prizes in a competition… that just happened to require the competitors pay for the right to play.

Which led to Gaz's current situation. Today was the day of the competition, and she was just waiting for it to come up on the company's website so she could log into it. As she did, she mentally reviewed the rules that had been posted weeks before — there was a fifty dollar buy-in, with the same to buy back in if you were eliminated. It was a trivia contest, with the subject not being revealed ahead of time, in order to ensure everyone would go into it without preparation. Any question you got wrong automatically eliminated you, and if you chose to use the buy back you'd have to start at the beginning again. Answer every question correctly and you'd get a copy of the game; once all the copies were claimed, the contest would end, and tough luck to everyone who'd tossed away plenty of good money for nothing.

Not that Gaz was worried about that outcome for herself. One of many upsides to being the child of someone like Professor Membrane was having access to a good-sized portion of his ridiculously huge fortune. And while she may spend a lot of it on games, she didn't blow through it like Dib did to finance his paranormal studies and fight with Zim. Which meant she had plenty of cash on hand, just in case.

But it wouldn't matter. She was sure that whatever the contest was about, she'd win it, and then-

_BOOM_

Gaz jumped as the house shook from the sound of a nearby explosion. Blinking in confusion for a moment, she scowled and jumped up from her seat, stomping over to the window. Tearing the curtain aside and opening the window, she leaned out and saw a soot-covered Dib stumbling out of the garage, smoke billowing after him.

"DIB!" she shouted down at him, making him jump in surprise, "What the hell are you doing?!"

"Sorry, Gaz!" he called back, "I was doing some rewiring on the ship, and I guess I caused an overload. Gonna take me forever to fix…"

"I don't care," she snapped, "I need total concentration up here, and you screwing around with your alien junk isn't helping! Go bug your stupid friends or something."

"I can't, they're busy today," he replied, trying in vain to wipe some of the soot off.

"Then find something else to do, just get out of the house so you don't distract me!"

"Sorry, but this is too important. I need this ship up and running if I'm going to be able to keep fighting Zim and Tak at full capacity," Dib said, though he paused as he took a look into the smoke-filled garage, "Er, though I'll probably need to wait a moment on that. Hey, I'm going to go take a shower to get this soot off, think you can let me know when it stops burning?"

Gaz grit her teeth but as she didn't outright say no, Dib must have taken that as agreement, as without another word he walked into the house. Growling to herself, Gaz slammed the window shut and pulled the curtain closed again, before collapsing into her seat with a scowl, arms crossed in annoyance.

"Great, this is all I need," she grumbled, "Of all the days for him to get caught up in something loud and annoying…"

Her grumbling only grew as she heard Dib come up the stairs and cross the hall into the bathroom, a few moments later followed by the sound of the shower starting to run.

" _Why are the walls in this house so thin? I swear I can hear him breathing in there,_ " she mentally groaned, " _Dammit, I'll never be able to focus on the contest with him in the house. I mean, I'll still win because I don't lose when it matters, but if he keeps distracting me I'll screw up and have to pay more than necessary just to get back in the game. And I'm not wasting my money because of that moron. But how do I get him out of the house and_ keep _him out?_ "

Gaz sat there, contemplating her perceived problem, when an idea suddenly occurred to her, something that she'd seen in more than one comedy movie. As the thought came to her, she snorted, and a cruel smirk formed on her face.

" _Oh yeah, that would definitely get rid of him for the rest of the day. Maybe longer if it works out right,_ " she mused, " _Now, I just have to get it done._ "

Checking the computer to confirm that she had enough time until the contest started to do what she needed to do, she got out of her chair. Exiting her room and making her way downstairs, she walked out to the garage, where the smoke was clearing, and closed the door, locking it with a padlock and taking the key with her as she reentered the house. Then, she quickly made a circuit of the house, making sure that every means of entering it other than the front door was shut and locked. She then opened the front door, stepped back so that she wasn't standing between it and the stairs, and cupped her hands around her mouth.

"Hey, Dib! Bigfoot's on the lawn!" she shouted, loud enough to be heard upstairs. There was a moment of silence, and then the sound of a door slamming open, followed by the thud of running feet, and then Dib came sprinting down the stairs. As Gaz had been counting on, he was in such a rush that he'd only taken the time to throw a towel on rather than getting properly dressed. She grimaced slightly at the sight, but still smirked as he ran past her and right out the door.

"I've got you now, Bigfoot! I… huh?" Dib shouted, excitedly waving around a camera before trailing off and staring in confusion as he saw that there wasn't really a Sasquatch on his lawn.

_SLAM_

_Click_

Dib spun around, eyes widening as he saw that the door had shut behind him, and from the sound of it had locked. Yelping and blushing in embarrassment, he dropped the camera and clutched the towel around his waist tightly with one hand while he knocked hard and repeatedly on the door with the other.

"Gaz! Open the door, I locked myself out!" he shouted, looking nervously over his shoulder to see if anyone had spotted him; fortunately there was no one else outside, but that could change at any moment.

Hearing laughter, Dib turned back around to see Gaz standing at the window, smirking widely and clearly enjoying his predicament.

"Gee, Dib, you forget something?" she asked sarcastically, loudly enough to be heard through the glass.

"Haha, very funny, now let me in," Dib said, laughing nervously. When Gaz merely continued smirking at him, he gulped and decided to switch to outright pleading, "Come on, Gaz, please! Someone's gonna see me!"

"You're right, they will," she said, pulling out her phone. As Dib stared in shocked disbelief, she dialed a number, and when it connected said, "Hello, police? I'd like to report some guy streaking in my neighborhood."

Dib's jaw dropped as he heard that. And when Gaz then hung up, gave a sarcastic wave, and disappeared back into the house, he could only sputter incoherently in indignant rage. However, he also knew that there was no point in wasting time voicing his anger, especially since it would most likely only attract unwanted attention. Instead, both hands gripping his towel tightly, he ran around the house to the backyard, only to find that the back door and windows were all also locked. And with the garage closed up, he couldn't even hide in there.

Just as Dib was considering finding a rock to break a window with in order to get back into the house, he heard the distinct sound of police sirens and froze. Slowly peeking around the side of the house, he paled at the sight of a police car pulling up, the two burly cops sitting in it getting out.

"So, what are we looking for again?" one of the cops asked.

"According to the scary-sounding girl who called it in, we got some guy running around here naked," his partner replied.

"Okay, but I don't see anything," the first cop said, looking up and down the street.

"Perv probably hid when he heard us coming," the second one said, apparently thinking for a moment before saying, "Okay, we'll check the backyards. You take the houses on that side, I'll take this one. When you reach the end of the block, double back and try the other end."

"Got it," the first cop said, turning to cross the street while his partner turned towards the Membrane house.

"Shit, shit, shit!" Dib swore, panicking as the cop approached. Not seeing any other option, he turned and ran towards the fence separating the backyard from the woods behind the house. With only a moment's pause, he leapt up to grab the top of the fence, pulling himself over and letting himself hit the dirt on the other side. Scrambling to his feet, he then dashed over to a nearby tree and hid behind it.

Pressing him against the tree and forcing himself to stay perfectly still and quiet, Dib listened to the sounds of the cop searching the yard. Even after he couldn't hear anything anymore, he waited a few minutes, until he was sure the cop was gone. Only then did he allow himself to slightly calm down and take a moment to start thinking things over properly.

"Okay, so, it shouldn't take them too long to search the neighborhood," he muttered, "I just need to be patient and wait for them to leave when they can't find me. Then I can just break a door down to get back in the house. Man, I am going to _kill_ Gaz for this, why would she even-?"

"Grrrrr."

The sudden noise caught Dib by surprise, and he slowly turned towards its source to find a large dog standing nearby and growling as it glared at him. After a moment, he recognized it as belonging to one of his neighbors, and belatedly remembered with rapidly growing panic that it hadn't liked him ever since that time that it had caught him going through said neighbor's garbage cans looking for some mole people that he'd been chasing.

"Uh… nice doggy?" he said faintly. In response, the dog snarled and leapt at him, Dib screaming in panic. Turning, he started running in a random direction, heading deeper into the woods, the dog almost literally nipping at his heels.

XXXXXXX

Meanwhile, back inside the house, Gaz settled back into her room, a self-satisfied smirk on her face. Sure, a small part of her felt a little bad about doing this to her brother, but if it kept him out of her way, she'd live with the little guilt. Besides, it was hardly the first time Dib had been publicly humiliated or arrested. He'd get over it.

Checking the time, Gaz grinned as she saw that the contest was finally about to begin. Cracking her neck to loosen the muscles, she turned her full attention back to her computer as the link on the website became active. Clicking it, she quickly entered the required information, and was logged into the system.

"Welcome, _Gore of War_ fans!" a digital voice spoke as the series' dagger-through-a-heart logo floated on the screen, "Prepare yourselves, for the chance to be one of the lucky few to win a copy of the bloodiest game in the franchise's history! If you are truly capable and dedicated, and don't mind potentially throwing all your money away, then get ready, because the trivia competition is about to begin!"

Gaz smirked in anticipation, watching as the logo disappeared and a new page came up, listing a question with several answer choices beneath it.

"And the category for the competition is… The Supernatural!" the automated announcer said, "Test your knowledge of the paranormal, that wonderful fantasy fiction that is such a key element of our genre. If you know enough about it, you may yet have a chance of winning one of our precious few copies of _The Bloodening_! May the most determined gamers win!"

"…Shit," Gaz said flatly, eye twitching as she realized that she'd just gotten rid of the one person who could guarantee her an easy win in this. Still, she wasn't one to dwell on problems (least of all ones of her own making), so instead she just shook it off and refocused on the contest. After all, every moment wasted gave her competitors more of a head start, and diminished her chances of getting one of the games.

"Okay, no problem, I can get through this," she muttered, "I mean, I've been stuck listening to Dib ramble about this stuff for years. I'm sure some of it's rubbed off on me subconsciously."

Looking at the screen, she read the first question aloud, "'What is the oldest European name for vampires? A) Vampyre B) Strigoi C) Nosferatu or D) Jiangshi.' Hmph, well, that last one's definitely Asian, and that first one looks like it's just lazy spelling, so I doubt that's it. Wait, wasn't there some old vampire movie called Nosferatu? That's probably it then."

Smirking, Gaz selected answer C and hit enter… and then her face fell as the screen flashed red with a buzzer sound, the word "Incorrect" popping up with a button labeled "Buy back in?" underneath it.

"Are you kidding me?" she muttered angrily as she clicked the button to reenter the game, refreshing the page. Clicking on answer B, Gaz was able to grunt in approval as this time a chime sounded to signal it was the right choice and the page changed to the next question.

"Okay, it doesn't matter. This is just bad luck. I can handle this. I'm not going to lose to something this stupid," Gaz said firmly, determined to win no matter what.

XXXXXXX

Dib wasn't sure how long he ran, barely staying ahead of the dog the entire time, but eventually he started to tire. Realizing he couldn't afford to stop to catch his breath, he instead turned towards the nearest tall tree and leapt into the air to grab the lowest-hanging branch. Scrambling desperately, he pulled himself up to fully sit on the branch, only to yelp as he felt something tug on him hard enough to almost pull him back off.

Looking down, Dib cursed as he saw that the dog had jumped up and grabbed ahold of his towel. Now it was dangling in the air from its grip, growling at him through the teeth clenched around the material.

"Let go, you stupid mutt!" he snapped, holding himself in place with one hand while grabbing the towel with the other and shaking it hard in an attempt to dislodge the dog. However, as he did so, he failed to notice that the rapid movements were causing the knot holding the towel in place — which had rather shockingly held up in the circumstances — to loosen, which it did for several moments, before finally coming apart completely.

"Wha- hey!" Dib yelped, flushing red as he realized what had happened. He let go of of the branch to try and re-secure the towel, but nearly lost his balance as a result. In instinctive response to this, he grabbed the branch with both hands… and thus let go of the towel completely, which fell to the ground with the dog. Upon hitting the dirt, the animal blinked in surprise, before yelping and running off, the towel still clutched firmly between its teeth.

Dib could only sit there on the branch, stunned from disbelief and face growing even redder, until it looked like a giant tomato.

"That… that did not… how is my luck _that_ bad?!" he screamed, slamming his head against the tree trunk a few times. He then forced himself to take a few deep breaths and calm down so that he could think clearly.

"Okay, this is bad, and downright humiliating, but I've been through worse," he muttered, "I just need to get back home. And somehow get inside the house. All without being seen by anyone, and while hoping those cops are gone by the time I get there. Crap."

Knowing there was nothing to do for it, Dib sighed deeply and hopped off the tree. Hitting the ground, he spotted a small bush nearby. Seeing as it was better than nothing, he grabbed and, after a few minutes struggle, managed to uproot it and hold it in front of himself as makeshift cover. It wasn't much, and wouldn't help if anyone saw him from behind, but it would have to do.

Taking another steadying breath, Dib started to walk, only to pause as something suddenly occurred to him.

"Wait, which way did I come from?" he said, looking around, but seeing no clues — he'd been so focused on evading the dog that he hadn't been paying attention to his surroundings. And the forest looked exactly the same in every direction.

"That figures," Dib muttered, before shaking his head with a sigh and walking in a random direction. The way he saw it, sooner or later he'd come across some sign of civilization, which he could use to figure out his location and how to get home from there. And maybe find some clothing, or at least better cover, while he was at it.

Some time later, however, he was still in the middle of the woods, with no sign of anything in sight.

"Stupid Gaz, stupid dogs, stupid woods," he grumbled, with a passable duplicate of his sister's trademark growl plastered on his face, "Only thing that could make this situation worse would be if I somehow ran into Zim in the middle of all this. I'm sure he'd get a huge laugh outta… AH!"

Dib trailed off with a yelp as he passed through several bushes and suddenly found himself in a clearing, surrounded by people. He blushed and instinctively pulled his makeshift cover closer to himself, only to pause and stare as he properly looked around and something rather glaring registered with him — namely, that he wasn't the only naked person present. More specifically, _everyone_ was naked; dozens of people were milling about the clearing, attending what appeared to be various picnic activities, all looking perfectly normal, except for the fact that not one had a stitch of clothing on.

Staring slack-jawed at all of this, Dib's already shocked mind outright froze completely as a group of several quite beautiful women passed by right in front of him, chatting happily while utterly ignoring his presence and how he got a total eyeful of their, well, _everything_. He could only stand there, dumbly opening and closing his mouth repeatedly, muttering incoherently and dropping the bush he was carrying as his arms went slack.

"Right on, brother! Ditch those last shreds of humility and really get into the spirit!" cheered a middle-aged man with a greying bushy beard and wearing nothing but a peace symbol medallion, who was leaning against a tree nearby and smoking something that from the smell of it was definitely _not_ a cigarette. Dib blinked as hearing that snapped him back to normal; blushing brightly, he yelped again and frantically grabbed the dropped bush, pulling it back up in front of himself again.

"Aw, come on little dude, don't be like that!" the evident hippie said, "This is what this commune's all about, after all, being able to be one with nature without any of the judgments or body-shaming that modern society forces on us. Modesty is an artificial concept, man!"

"Er, right," Dib said, not sure what else he could say in response to that, as he reluctantly dropped the bush. His instincts were screaming at him to cover himself anyway he could, but as he'd apparently stumbled upon some kind of nudist colony-slash-hippie commune, that'd probably just make him stick out more.

"So, I'm just gonna go and do… something," he said lamely, waving weakly around the clearing.

"Righteous," the hippie replied, taking another drag of his joint. Dib wasn't sure how to respond to that, so after a moment of staring silently at the man he turned and walked off further into the commune.

Walking through the clearing, Dib forced his mind off his embarrassment by putting his investigative eye to work, taking in his surroundings. Forcing himself to not focus on the naked bodies filling his field of vision in every direction, he instead took in everything else — the picnic tables, the cabins, the stage where a band was performing, all the things that made it look like a normal camp. Which just made the nudity of all present even more uncanny.

"Focus. Now, just because they're all naked while they're _here_ , doesn't mean they don't have clothes stored somewhere nearby," Dib thought out loud as he meandered through the crowds, "I mean, they must go into town for supplies sometimes, and they can't do _that_ naked. So, I just need to find where the clothes are stored and borrow some. Then I- oof!"

Caught up as he was in his planning, Dib stopped watching where he was going and bumped right into someone. Immediately growing flustered at making physical contact with another person while they were both naked, Dib jumped back, blushing and holding up his hands to keep from touching anything he shouldn't.

"Oh god, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to- TAK?!" he started to stammer, only to yell as he saw just who he had bumped into.

"Oh great, it's you," Tak replied dryly, scowling at him.

Dib would have been more intimidated by the death glare the female Irken was sending him if he wasn't distracted by the fact that Tak was, indeed, just as naked as everyone else. To which he had to say, _damn_. Her usual outfit was baggy enough to obscure most of her curves, and while her Skool gym uniform hugged them enough to highlight that they were probably impressive, seeing everything fully on display was a whole other matter — her breasts were easily C-bordering-on-D cups, and her ass was practically heart-shaped. True, it was probably all just her holographic disguise, but still…

"If you don't stop ogling me, human, I'm going to rip your 'little friend' off," Tak snarled, snapping Dib out of his leering daze, "Which should be easy with how much it's sticking out."

Dib's blush spread to his whole head as he registered what that meant, and he quickly covered his crotch with both hands, doing his best to force down his massive erection.

"Sorry… I… what are you even doing here?!" he nearly screamed, desperate to change the subject.

"I could ask you the same thing," she countered.

"I asked you first!"

"Ugh, fine," Tak grumbled, planting her hands on her hips, "If you must know, I stumbled across this place during a routine examination of the city perimeter. I thought it might be some sort of militia or cult compound and decided to investigate it more closely. And I'm sure you can imagine my disgruntlement when they forced me to turn in my clothing before they'd even let me past the line in the dirt they use instead of an actual security fence because they 'don't believe in confining boundaries' or some such nonsense."

"Yeah, I can… wait, what about your PAK? How'd you get away with keeping that on?" Dib asked, genuine curiosity overriding his hormones.

"Oh, that's easy, I just modified my hologram to cloak it. See?" she replied, turning around. To his credit, Dib only took advantage of the perfect view of her ass for about twenty seconds before forcing himself to look further up, seeing that her back did indeed appear totally bare; Tak tapped the spot where her PAK would be, and the air shimmered as the hologram flickered for a moment before clearing again.

"Anyway, it's safe to say that this has been a total waste of my time," Tak said, turning back around, "I've searched this entire place, and all that's here is a bunch of humans who like to be naked and smoke narcotic weeds while talking about granola. Now, your turn. Why are _you_ here?"

"Gaz tricked me into running out of the house naked and locked me out, then a dog chased me into the woods, and now I'm here."

"That's it?" Tak asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Yeah, my luck's just that bad," Dib sighed, "I mean, I've been in worse situations than this before, but this is still _really_ embarrassing."

"Oh, suck it up human," Tak snapped, rolling her eyes, "This is the first time I've been naked in decades, but you don't hear _me_ whining about it, do you?"

"No, but… wait, what?" Dib asked, blinking in confusion, "How does that work?"

"Irken clothes are infused with nanites designed to absorb and eradicate bodily waste exuded through the skin," Tak replied, tone suggesting this should have been obvious, "As such we never need to waste valuable time on something as mundane as cleaning ourselves, with the added effect of never needing to change or take off our clothes. So, if anything, this situation is probably more awkward for me than it is for you. So stop complaining before I-"

_ZZZTTT!_

To Dib's surprise, Tak was cut off as the side of her head suddenly sparked, and her hologram shut off, leaving her in her normal Irken form.

"Irk dammit, not again!" Tak snarled, reaching up to fiddle with the implant in the side of her head. While she did that, Dib found himself once again staring, as he got his first look at fully exposed Irken anatomy — which to his surprise, was nearly identical to her human disguise. Aside from the green skin, everything was exactly the same, being just as big and curvy, which a part of his mind couldn't help but scientifically scrutinize. After all, why would a member of an insectoid species have mammaries?

The rest of him, meanwhile, was arguing with itself over whether or not he should find her _more_ attractive like this.

After a few minutes of angry grumbling and tinkering with her implant, Tak managed to restore her hologram. The transition from Irken back to human snapped Dib out of his daze, and he shook his head clear, managing to regain focus before Tak even noticed that he had been leering at her again.

"What just happened?" he asked, which seemed to remind her that he was present.

"Something in all this drug smoke the other humans are putting out is interfering with my holographic interface, it keeps shorting out," Tak explained in annoyance, before adding under her breath, "Stuck naked _and_ with a faulty disguise. Tenn is never going to let me live this down."

"Hang on, you mean you keep losing your disguise in public, around lots of potential witnesses?" Dib asked, starting to grin widely. Seeing this, Tak snorted and rolled her eyes.

"Don't get your hopes up," she said dryly, before turning towards a group of hippies sitting at a nearby table, "Hey, did any of you see a big green bug person just now?"

"Yeah man, over there playing poker with a pink elephant and a unicorn," a woman replied, pointing toward nearby spot that was completely empty of anything.

"See?" Tak said, turning back to Dib with a smirk, "They're all too drugged out of their minds to notice anything unusual. This situation is annoying to me, but not a threat."

"…That figures," Dib muttered. Then something Tak had said earlier came back to him, and he said, "Wait, you said they made you turn your clothing in when you got here?"

"Yeah, they put all occupants' and visitors' clothes in storage until they're ready to leave, apparently."

"Can you tell me where that storage area is?" Dib asked hopefully.

"I could, but I won't," Tak replied. When Dib's face fell in disbelief, she smirked wider, "We _are_ enemies, Dib. Why would I make anything easier for you?"

Seeing as he couldn't really argue with that logic, Dib merely grumbled and stomped off, by now too frustrated to continue the conversation. As he walked away, he looked back over his shoulder and saw Tak give him another smirk and a sarcastic wave before turning and walking in the opposite direction… and did her hips normally sway that much, or was she doing it deliberately now just to mess with him?

"Dammit, focus," Dib muttered, shaking his head to ward off the distracting arousal, "This place doesn't look that big. I just have to look around, find where they keep the clothes, and take some. Then I can get out of here, find my way home, and pretend that this whole day never happened."

With that, Dib walked off to start his search, silently cursing his sister once again for causing this, and hoping with bitter sarcasm that she, at least, was having a good day.

XXXXXXX

Gaz was very definitely _not_ having a good day. She had gone through nearly a hundred questions already, and gotten every single one of them wrong at least once, some of them multiple times, only getting the right answer through process of elimination. What probably should have taken her a half hour, tops, had taken nearly four times that, but at last she was at the final question. She just had to beat it, and she could _finally_ claim her game.

"Okay, okay, let's do this," she muttered, sweaty and hair a stress-induced mess, "Final question. 'Name this 'demon flyer' said to be native to New Guinea. A) Fei Lian B) Ropen C) Akuchu D) Ebu Gogo.' How the hell am I supposed to know that? All these names sound like gibberish!"

For a few moments, Gaz simply ground her teeth as she tried to determine the right answer. Finally grunting in annoyance, she just picked one at random, settling on D. And, to her intense rage, this resulted in the "Incorrect" sign popping back up again.

"Goddammit! Fine, whatever, I'll just try _again_ ," she practically snarled, hitting the buy back button… only for an alarm to ring and a screen to pop up saying "Insufficient funds".

"What the hell?!" Gaz exclaimed, hitting the button a few more times in desperation, only to get the same message each time, "There is no fucking way I'm out of money already! What's going on?!"

Opening a new tab, Gaz brought up her bank account. And before she could look around it to figure out what was happening, a video file window popped up, which to her surprise was displaying her father's image. Confused, she hit the play button on the file.

" _Hello, son and/or daughter,_ " the recording greeted, " _If you are watching this video, it means that you've hit the new daily limit on your bank account. You see, recently my accountants informed me that I was being far too lenient in the access I allow you in regards to your portions of the family finances, especially as you've been often overindulging in it to waste on your ridiculous fake science or pizza and video games. Thus, I have placed a cap on your accounts, specifically towards how much you can spend on any given day. If you're seeing this message, then you've hit it, and will now have to wait 24 hours for the funds to be unfrozen again._ "

"24 hours?!" Gaz shrieked, "The competition will be over by then! No, this is not happening!"

All she could do was yell incoherently for several minutes, raging at the situation she found herself in, and unable to think of a way out of it. However, eventually a desperate thought popped into her head.

"Dad must keep all the banking information written down," she muttered, "Probably in his lab, I know he has a safe hidden in there somewhere. I just have to find it, and I can override this idiotic block. It hasn't been that long, there has to still be at least a few copies of the game left. If I hurry, I know I'll still have time to win one."

Decision made, Gaz jumped out of her chair and bolted out of her room. Within a minute, she was down in her father's home lab in the basement. Looking around, she frowned at the various stacks of boxes scattered across the room; the Professor had been using the home lab less and less lately, turning it more into a storage area for old experiments he couldn't be bothered to keep at his main facilities. Which Gaz normally didn't care about, but right now it was making it impossible to find what she was looking for.

"Okay, if I'm remembering this right, the safe is built into a wall, near the floor. But where?" she thought out loud, tapping a foot against the floor in agitation. After a few moments of thought, she finally decided to just start moving around all the boxes until she found what she was looking, as while that seemed like an annoying waste of time it was still the only solution she could think of.

So, she got to work, pulling stacks of boxes away from the nearest wall, grunting at the exertion of moving the heavy equipment. Finding that the spot of wall she'd exposed didn't contain the safe, she scowled and moved to the next stack and repeated the process. This went on for almost half an hour, until Gaz found herself having made almost a full circuit of the room and ended up clearing a spot almost on the exact opposite side of the doorway from where she'd started.

"That figures," she said with a sigh, as she found the safe set into the wall behind the last spot she checked. Glad to have finally found what she was looking for, Gaz eagerly shoved aside the final stack of boxes… a little _too_ eagerly, in fact, as the boxes slammed into the stack next to it, which wobbled from the impact before falling over and slamming into the next.

This domino effect continued, quickly spreading across the room. Hearing this commotion, Gaz turned around just in time to see the stack of boxes right next to her get knocked over and fall towards her.

"AH!" she yelled, instinctively throwing her arms up protectively… only to blink in confusion as nothing happened. Looking up, she found that the topmost box in the stack had smacked against the wall, and the way all of the boxes were stacked meant they were bracing against each other, leaving the whole stack precariously balanced in a diagonal angle above Gaz. She could only stare at this in disbelief, before snorting and chuckling slightly at the absurdity of the situation, letting the momentary tension leave her.

Then one of the boxes popped open and several glass vials fell out, smashing open on and around Gaz, splattering her with some kind of glowing blue goo.

"Gah! What the hell?!" she exclaimed, spitting the goo out of her mouth and doing her best to scrub it off her face. As if in response to her question, a shrill alarm suddenly sounded, the lab's lights beginning to flash red.

" _Biohazard alert! Biohazard alert!_ " a computerized voice rang out, " _Mutated yeast from Project: Super Toast detected outside of containment. Decontamination protocols now initiating, please standby._ "

"'Decontamination'?" Gaz echoed faintly, not liking the sound of that. Then she yelped in surprise as several metal claws attached to tendrils shot out of the walls and clamped onto her wrists and ankles, lifting her into the air and leaving her suspended spread eagle. And before she could even process this, several more mechanical arms emerged and, without warning, quickly tore all her clothes off.

"What the fuck?! What are you doing?!" Gaz screamed in outrage at whatever computer was running this, face flushing bright red as she struggled futilely against the restraints.

The system didn't respond, however, merely tossing the remains of Gaz's goo-covered clothes into an incinerator. At the same time, several large hoses emerged from somewhere and began spraying high-pressure streams of hot water at Gaz from multiple angles, covering her entire body, while several more washed the goo on the floor into a drain. And as she sputtered and struggled to gasp for breath from beneath the water, several more mechanical arms appeared and approached her, holding large bars of soap, sponges, wire brushes, and in one case, an electrical razor.

Several agonizing minutes later, the system determined that it had completed the process, shutting off the water, withdrawing the various appendages, and letting Gaz drop to the floor. Every inch of skin on her body had been scrubbed a raw reddish-pink, and her head had been completely shaved, the shorn hair being vacuumed up and joining her clothes in the incinerator.

" _Decontamination complete. Thank you and have a nice day,_ " the digital voice spoke again. Gaz, lying face down on the floor, could only moan in pain in response, in too much pain to even move her head and glare at wherever the voice was coming from.

She made a mental note to later send her robot dolls down here to smash everything, just to spite her father for building such an overzealous security system. But right now she had to move on and focus on what was important, and get that banking information out of the safe and go earn her game.

…As soon as she could move without her whole body screaming in pain, that is.

XXXXXXX

Dib was seriously starting to hate this commune. Between the alternating arousal and disgust he had at seeing the various naked people surrounding him, the inane pseudo-philosophical debates random people kept trying to drag him into, and what he was pretty sure was a secondhand high from all the pot smoke in the air, he couldn't concentrate on what he was trying to do — he was pretty sure he'd searched several spots repeatedly without realizing it, and he still hadn't found where the clothes were kept.

"Come on already! This place isn't that big, why can't I find where the clothes are kept?!" he finally exclaimed in frustration.

"They're over in that shed, dude," a hippie passing by said. Dib blinked and followed the man's pointing finger, seeing a moderately-sized shed a few yards away, at the edge of clearing.

"…Why didn't I just ask for directions to begin with?" he asked rhetorically. Shaking his head in annoyance at the oversight, Dib quickly made his way over to the shed, which was thankfully not locked. Entering the shed, he sighed deeply in relief at the sight that greeted him — numerous boxes full of clothes, all relatively freshly cleaned too, from the look of the laundry machine in the corner. That was a definite plus, he noted with a snort, as he didn't feel like wearing someone else's dirty underwear, even if he _was_ desperate.

Choosing not to dwell on that, Dib quickly sorted through the clothes. Making sure to take the various articles from different boxes (no reason to _completely_ steal someone else's outfit, after all), he found himself with a blue shirt, khaki pants, underwear, socks, and boots. The only thing that really felt missing was a coat, but that wasn't something he was willing to nitpick over at the moment.

He was about to put the clothes on right there, but paused as something occurred to him. How would the commune members react if any of them recognized the clothes he was taking as their own? Would they even care, with how baked they all were? With the luck he'd been having today, they probably would, and form an angry mob or something.

Deciding not risk it, Dib merely gathered up his "borrowed" clothes in a bundle which he clutched close to his chest and walked out of the shed, slowly making his way towards the edge of the clearing. Once he was in the woods and out of risk of being discovered, he'd put the clothes on and quickly make his way away from the commune; hopefully, he'd either find his way directly back to town, or at least find a landmark of some kind to point the way.

A few minutes later, feeling he was safely deep enough in the woods, he rounded one last tree just to be safe… and froze as he found Tak standing nearby, holding her own clothes and clearly about to put them back on. However, that wasn't what caught Dib's attention. Rather, his focus was entirely on the mechanical bull-sized rocket standing on a tripod next to her.

"I see you found the clothes shed," she said dryly.

"What is that?" Dib asked, ignoring her comment and pointing at the rocket.

"Hmm? Oh, that's just a missile I'm going to blow up those filthy hippies with," she replied casually.

"What?! Why?"

"Because this has been an embarrassing waste of my time, and I honestly don't think I'll be able to get the smell of their filthy drugs out of my antennae for weeks from the sheer amount I've been exposed to," she said, scowling, "Blowing them all up is just cathartic. Now scram so I can concentrate and enjoy the moment."

"Like hell am I walking away and letting you blow up all those people!" Dib shouted, pointing dramatically at her with the hand not holding his pilfered clothes, "Sure, they're weird, but they don't deserve to get blown up for it, and if you wanna try it, you'll have to get through me first!"

"Oh, is that right?" Tak asked coyly. Dropping her clothes to the ground, she placed her hands on her hips and cocked them at a suggestive angle as she flashed Dib a faux-sultry smile, "You want to get physical with me while we're both naked? How bold of you."

Dib blushed brightly as he registered the innuendo, but forced the embarrassment out of his mind, knowing that she was just trying to screw with his head and throw him off balance.

"Knock that off!" he snapped, "And anyway, us both being naked means we're not armed, so I'd say that makes us about even, so I'll take my chances!"

In response, Tak arched an eyebrow, before her PAK legs suddenly deployed and pointed at him.

"…oh yeah, I forgot about those," Dib said faintly.

"Well, can't say I imagined this being how it all ended, Dib," Tak said with a smirk, "If it makes you feel any better, I'll leave the nudity out when I retell the story. Now, prepare to-"

_ZZZTTT!_

Tak was cut off as her implant once again sparked, her human hologram shutting off.

"Seriously, again?! I'm not even in the vicinity of the smoke anymore!" she yelled, reaching up to grab the implant. Taking advantage of the distraction, and acting on pure instinct, Dib threw the bundle in his arms at Tak; while the clothes fluttered uselessly to the ground, the boots flew through the air to smack her hard in the face, knocking her onto her back.

As Tak fell to the ground in a daze, Dib sprinted towards the missile. Jumping on top of it, he scrambled towards a hatch near the front and pulled it open, exposing the interior mechanics. Looking over the mess of wires and circuits, he immediately knew that he couldn't mess with any of that without any tools, so instead focused on the pulsing purple cube at the center of it all, which he knew was the actual explosive component of the missile. Grabbing it with both hands, he tugged hard, and after a few moments managed to tear it out of its setting.

"Ha! Take that! …Oh crap," he said, as he saw the torn wires begin sparking, which quickly spread across the circuits, everything soon lighting up entirely. The missile moved jerkily up and down and side-to-side, before its rockets suddenly ignited and it was sent flying into the air, Dib screaming as he hung on for dear life, at some point dropping the explosives to better secure his grip.

Tak, having recovered her wits, watched with a squinted eye as the out of control missile carried Dib off into the distance, soon vanishing from view. Meanwhile, something blew up nearby, presumably as a result of the dropped explosives hitting something.

"Meh, I'll take this as a victory," she said after a moment. Chuckling, she turned to retrieve her clothes… and froze as she found herself staring at a pile of ashes surrounded by scorched earth. Apparently, the portion of ground both her and Dib's stolen clothes had been dropped on had been close enough to the missile to be ignited by the backwash from its rockets firing. Literally the only things left were the boots that had hit her in the head.

Tak could only stare at this for a few minutes, slack-jawed, before finally snapping out of it and facepalming.

"Ah, _caragash >/em>… fine, whatever, I can just do what Dib did and steal some clothes from the hippies, then have the base systems manufacture some proper replacements when I get back. With any luck I can sneak in and do that without Tenn seeing me, then I can pretend this never happened," she thought out loud, before turning and walking back towards the commune, fiddling with her malfunctioning implant as she did so, managing to restore her hologram._

_Nearing the commune, she paused as she heard voices._

_"Hey man, did you hear something weird just now?"_

_"Yeah dude, something made the clothing shed blow up. I thought I was tripping, but it really happened. It was far out."_

_"Bummer. Guess anyone who wants to head back into town will have to streak, huh?"_

_As the conversing hippies walked by, continuing to casually discuss the sudden destruction of everyone's clothes, Tak could only stand there, frozen in disbelief. Then her eye started twitching, before she grabbed her head and screamed in rage._

_"This can not be happening! My luck is not this bad when Zim's not involved! AARRGGHHH!" she yelled, descending into incoherent gibberish as her rage overwhelmed her. Eventually, she calmed down and pressed her forehead against a tree trunk as she took several deep breaths and thought through her options._

_"Okay. So, the obvious and simplest solution is to call Tenn and have her pick me up. But then she'll know that I put myself in this situation, and she'll never let me hear the end of it. I can't contact MIMI and have her carry me back — she's not built for carrying a person at her full speed over long distances, which means she's likely to break down in the middle of the city, leaving me exposed. So all that leaves is trying to make my way back entirely on my own; I like my odds better for that, but there's still too much of a chance people might see me, and that sort of humiliation would ruin my cover reputation," she mused out loud. After a few minutes of contemplating all these options, she finally sighed in defeat and pulled a communicator out of her PAK, "Fine, Tenn it is, smaller-scale humiliation is better than large-scale. Still, I just know I'm not going to live this down."_

_And indeed she wouldn't. Especially after an amused Tenn later pointed out back at base that she could have just altered her hologram to _pretend_ that she'd taken her clothes off rather than actually doing it. Then she wouldn't have been stuck in this situation in the first place._

_Tak's mortification would last for days after that._

 _XXXXXXX_

 _Gaz's pain had finally faded enough that she was able to slowly get back to her feet and stumble over to the wall safe, wincing as she dropped onto her hands and knees next to it. Unfortunately, that was as far as her luck went, as she found herself unable to determine the proper code to unlock the damn thing. She'd entered the Professor's birthday, Einstein's birthday, Hawking's birthday, her own birthday, even Dib's birthday (though she was 99 percent sure their dad didn't remember that one), all with the same result of a negative-sounding beep and flashing red light._

_"Come on, already, I don't have time for this!" she snarled, as she entered the code for Pi and got the same result. Patience finally snapping, she got back to her feet and stomped over towards the nearest stack of boxes. Ripping several open (carefully, as she didn't want another decontamination), she searched through them until finally smirking as she pulled out a large mechanical wrench._

_"Fine, let's do this the hard way," she said, a slightly manic tone in her voice. Marching back to the safe, she hefted the wrench and then brought it down like a golf club, smashing into the safe door and leaving a small dent. Scowling at the lack of serious results, Gaz brought the wrench back to swing again, only to be interrupted as an alarm suddenly sounded._

_"Now what?" she demanded, as lights flashed around her._

_" _Security breach. Offender to be removed,_ " the computerized voice announced. Gaz tensed at that and held up the wrench defensively, expecting more robotic arms. Instead, a tube emerged from the ceiling above her and started sucking in air like a jet turbine. Dropping the wrench, Gaz didn't have a chance to run before she was pulled off her feet and sucked into the tube._

_Flying through a cramped dark tunnel and bouncing through several turns, the disoriented Gaz found herself being shot out of another tube. Blinded by the sudden bright light that filled her vision as she happened, Gaz was unable to see where she was before she fell through empty air slammed hard into… dirt?_

_Rapidly rubbing her eyes to clear them, Gaz looked around and yelped in panic at the sight that greeted her — she had been deposited on her front yard. As in, outside her house. And still completely naked._

_Blushing brightly, Gaz jumped to her feet and wrapped her arms protectively around herself before running towards the front door. But it was only after fruitlessly tugging at the doorknob for a couple of minutes that her panicked mind remembered that every way into the house was still locked from the inside._

_"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" she hissed, turning to run towards the backyard, "Okay, don't panic, I'll just do what Dib was too stupid to do and break a window to get in, then-"_

_"FREEZE, PERVERT!"_

_Gaz didn't have a chance to process that shouted order before one of the burly cops she'd called on Dib suddenly tackled her to the ground and pinned her._

_"Ha! See, I told you pretending to leave the neighborhood would flush 'em out!" the cop crowed to his partner as he cuffed Gaz's hands behind her back._

_"Yeah, but I thought the call said our streaker was a guy," the second cop said as he approached with a towel and observed Gaz as clinically and non-sexually as possible._

_"Eh, I can kinda see how someone could make that mistake from a distance," the first cop said as he pulled the struggling Gaz to her feet and held her still so his partner could wrap the towel around her._

_"HEY!" Gaz shouted, too insulted at that comment and angry at the situation to be embarrassed at the moment, "And I'm not the streaker, you idiots, I'm the one who called you!"_

_"Right, you called us on some _other_ naked person running around," the first cop said dryly as he pushed her towards his car._

_"No, I-"_

_"Save it for your lawyer, sicko!" the cop shouted, tossing her into the backseat of the car. He and his partner then got back in the front and drove off, ignoring Gaz's protests._

_For the next few minutes, the neighborhood was quiet… and then Tak's disarmed missile, with a screaming Dib still holding onto it, slammed into the Membrane house, smashing right through the roof and depositing Dib smack in the middle of his own room. Even after everything he'd been through today, even Dib couldn't help but laugh at the contrivance of that._

_Once he regained consciousness, at least._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And, done. Took a while longer than I had hoped, as I had to stop and rework parts of it — the original outline made the encounter with Tak only one of several Dib had, also running into Zita (which I cut cause I couldn't make it work) and Viera (which ended up feeling tacked on and gratuitous). But since the Tak section was so much fun, I decided to just expand on it and make it the main focus of Dib's side of this, with a little added karma for her.
> 
> Hope you all enjoyed it.
> 
> Once more, stay safe and healthy out there, everyone, and until whenever the next time is, please comment!


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